We Need More Carriers and More Marines

National Security Online ^ | 12/6/2002 | Christopher W. Holton

[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.

[Willie Green]

The specific period Willie Green cited was 1989-1992, and that was the only defense-related post he held during those particular years.

Yeah, it was my bad.

It was Cheney/Powell that initiated the hardware downsizing/transformation under Papa Bush.
Prior to 9/11, Rummy was preoccupied with base closings and Star Wars.
Rumsfeld talks up 'son of star wars'
Bush's Plans for the Pentagon Include Base Closings and Money for Missile Defenses

[ErnBatavia]

Willie...are you Scott Ritter? Or Alan Colmes? Or a hacker? You've really been on the "erratic" side of things the past few days.

[Willie Green]

Here we go, I'm starting to find what I was looking for now.

The "two war" strategy that has underpinned U.S. military planning for the past decade has outlived its usefulness, leaving the United States increasingly vulnerable to emerging threats like ballistic missiles and cyberattack, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told Congress.
Rumsfeld Calls U.S. Defense Strategy Out of Date
(Posted on 06/23/2001)

[Willie Green]

You've really been on the "erratic" side of things the past few days.

"erratic"???

What do you mean "erratic"???

[Constantine XIII]

It also wouldn't be as vulnerable to nukes as surface ships, provided we could get it to go a little deeper, no? Set off at full power and submerge before impact, but I don't know enough about the stresses such a thing would cause or what subs are designed to withstand to do anything other than wave my hands :O)

[VaBthang4]

Like the Stryker and Abrams...I wouldnt mind a nice mixture of both the Nimitz types and these "Corsairs".

:o)

Some people are gonna have to get over themselves. It is time to move forward from here....not recoup everything lost under Clinton and then go forward from there.

Transition can be difficult for "Locked-in-the-box" thinkers but it is reality.

Let's Roll.
Semper Fi

[Sub-Driver]

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

[Poohbah]

The "two war" strategy that has underpinned U.S. military planning for the past decade has outlived its usefulness, leaving the United States increasingly vulnerable to emerging threats like ballistic missiles and cyberattack, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told Congress.

One problem with the "two war" strategy is that we've never been willing to pay for the forces that would actually be required to fight two major wars at once. The other problem is that the two-war strategy actually boiled down to strategy and forces to fight two very particular wars (Iraq and Korea), while the real-world crisis responses we did were all over the damn place. Some of our initial fumbling in Afghanistan was due to the mismatch of forces and strategy this caused.

[VaBthang4]

Am I the first person you've heard offer up the concept of submarines capable of being sizable troop carriers as well as UAV launch and recovery points?

Am I crazy?

:o)

[Poohbah]

Am I the first person you've heard offer up the concept of submarines capable of being sizable troop carriers as well as UAV launch and recovery points?

The thing would make the Typhoon class look pretty small...

[VaBthang4]

That's what I was thinking. Is it remotely practicle? Feasable? Defendable?

[Willie Green]

One problem with the "two war" strategy is

Which is why Rummy doesn't want more carriers and subs.
He wants to spend the money on the high-tech Nintendo stuff instead.

I KNOW that Poopster.
It's what I said to begin with.
You're the one who seems to be getting hyper simply because I
forgot it was Cheney who started the shebang under Papa Bush.

[Poohbah]

Problems:

A hull that big means a lot of power to push it. That means lots of cavitation and hull flow noises.

Very large underwater structures are going to be problematic at best--the steel strong enough to get significant depth is not easily welded, and even slightly defective welds would have to be redone.

If you opt for staying shallow, then you have a problem with the Bernouilli hump and Kelvin wakes--basically, signatures that, for a sub that big, can be detected by maritime patrol aircraft and/or space assets.

[tanknetter]

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

There are currently six light carriers in service that are as close to the "Corsair" concept as you can get. The three Royal Navy Invincible Class ships, the Italian Giuseppe Garibaldi, Spain's Principe De Asturias and Thailand's Chakri Nareubet.

While all these ships are better than nothing at all, they have shown the severe limitations of small-deck carriers, especially when it comes to handling long deployments, sustained air operations and power-projection missions. The penultimate evidence of this is that Italy is more than doubling the tonnage for its next VSTOL carrier (Andrea Doria), while the RN's next generation carriers will be over 2.5x as large as the Invincibles, and have the ability to be retrofitted with catapults and arrestor gear.

The "lighter carrier" concept has been tried again and again by the US - going back as far as the USS Ranger in the 1930s all the way forward to the Sea Control Ship concept (which was actually the basis for Spain's carrier program) in the 1970s - which included trials with Harriers on the LPH USS Guam. Nearly 70 years of hard experience has shown that lighter carriers are *not* the way to go for a country like the US that relys on its carriers for long-duration power projection missions.

[Poohbah]

Willie, the whole "two war" concept was a strategy to defend a Cold War force structure after the Cold War ended. It was not any sort of serious startegy for the post-Cold War era.

[ErnBatavia]

Well, er...um....your number 34 is a touch of an indicator. You've begun really shooting some heavier caliber than a 22 at Bush, X-41, and all their staffs. You've got some sort of 'woody' that seems to need some relief, it would appear.

That's what I mean.

In the meanwhile, have a great time with your daily "layoffs - economy swirling further into the dumper" cut and pastes.

[Non-Sequitur]

Too big, too noisy, to vulnerable to other submarines for a start. The key in ASW is quiet. Quiet buys you invisibility. Quiet buys you safety. Nothing is noisier than a submarine blowing it's tanks to surface except maybe a submarine in the process of submerging. Do that a couple of times and you can be pinpointed from hundreds of miles away if the water conditions are right.

[Non-Sequitur]

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