He's an EDO so that might explain the lack of campaign ribbons. From his bio looks like he went EDO as a senior LT.
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Road to 350: What Does the US Navy Do Anyway?
- Thread starter Randy Daytona
- Start date
Well that 350 (or 355) presumably came out of some level of OPNAV strategic analysis.
What's less clear is just exactly what kind of 355.
355 with a battle force entirely made up of AEGIS ships for surface combatants is going to have very different cost and capability from one made up of LCS or follow on FFs.
With the Shitty Kitty...actually watching that part, NAVSEA actual seems pretty unenthused about the idea. More like "We're going to look at it just to cover all the bases, not that I think this is actually going to be a good idea," but tone doesn't really get conveyed in an article.
Could be a good teaching point on talking to the media.
NAVSEA comment on the pre-VLS Ticonderogas is pertinent here. You would essentially have to do the same thing that makes him so reluctant to recommend upgrading the old CGs.
The Perry is more capable than LCS in certain areas...but it's not really that much of a step up.
To get to the point where the Turkish frigates are, you'd have to replace the entire combat system, put in new radars, and a new launching system. Pretty much an end to end combat system modernization...and at the end of it you still have tired old hull.
And that's just to get where the Turks are...which isn't all that great.
exNavyOffRec
Well-Known Member
Looking at his bio it doesn't surprise me he is a nuke, he would have arrived at his first ship around 1983 and there wasn't too much going on until he went EDO-N, and back then in the nuke world for awards the general rule was officers rec'd NCM's, CPO's rec'd NAM's, and anyone else rec'd a LOC, and that was if we rec'd awards at all.
No clue on the price - that was one ping for range and I threw out a marker of $2 billion. I can't speak to the condition of the ships - or if there is money enough to fix them - that is the admiral's and politicians' job. It is good to see them considering all options, especially in light of every shipbuilding program being horrendously over budget.
Speaking of all options, looks like the Combatant Commanders are looking at using the Army's toys now as well.
http://breakingdefense.com/2016/10/army-atacms-missile-will-kill-ships-secdef-carter/
https://news.usni.org/2017/05/30/pa...to-exercises-ahead-of-2018-rimpac-army-sinkex
exNavyOffRec
Well-Known Member
at 13 years as a surface nuke he should have been a LCDR, SWO-N's usually get spot promoted after arriving for the PA tour (about 10 years) and get to keep it after they leave, the earliest I saw a PA get spot promoted was one that skipped her shore tour and was spot promoted at about 8.5 years, she also kept it after leaving.
That isn't true though.
The DDG-51 program has been pretty consistent on budget...but that's what happens when you lock in a design and only make relatively minor modifications between batches of construction and have the line running for about 25+ years.
The Virginia program is supposed to be the poster child for how a sub program should be run.
There is no guarantee that a modernization program of mothballed ships wouldn't turn into an overbudget fiasco either.
Good points.
I worked in an N81 shop at the Pentagon, which does force assessment (though that wasn't my gig in particular). N81's role is basically to make all the other codes in OPNAV show their math. "We need (x) LCSs." "Okay, why (x)?" It was fascinating watching the process play out sometimes as a total layman and fly on the wall. You have a lot of very smart people using very detailed analysis to justify numbers that often have little to do with "how many ships/aircraft do we need?" A shipyard needs to produce a certain number of hulls per year to stay solvent, for example. And unfortunately a lot of years of deferring other things to pay for O&M is coming home to roost. We're doing the equivalent of a family deciding whether Mary gets a new wheelchair or Johnny goes to to college, because we can't afford both, and they can barely afford Grandma's insulin and already put Rover down because dog food's expensive.
And yeah...after listening to NAVSEA's comments, this has the smell of a Good Idea that he was handed. Someone upstream remembered how Reagan brought the BB's back out of mothballs and said, hey why don't we do that? But I don't think any of the decommed ships they're talking about were put in any preservation beyond the very basics. MARAD wants most of them scrapped because they're environmental hazards. Even the recent decomms like the last of the FFGs would require some major hull and machinery work to get them seaworthy, never mind upgrading the combat systems.
So I saw this article on the Kitty Hawk pop up in my social media feed today. My first thought was it was a Duffel Blog post or similar, but it seems to take itself seriously as an attempt to get to ship number goals. Then I started thinking... what about having a dedicated CQ carrier again, freeing up the nuke ships to range further afield? Assuming the material condition hurdle can be overcome, that is...
Crazy story, satire, or plausible? What say you?
Crazy story, satire, or plausible? What say you?
If I remember correctly, that was the plan for the Midway, not sure why if never happened. Using the Kitty Hawk seems like a lot of ship to be steaming circles in the Gulf of Mexico.
With her requiring fuel every 3 days underway, it's hard to imagine the Navy wanting to deploy her, at least in the conventional sense. That's why it occurred to me- it could free up the other carriers and extend equipment life. That said, I know next to nothing about surface logistics and hull maintenance, so maybe the juice isn't worth the squeeze (again, assuming the ship itself can even be made operational again.)
We were talking about this in the "Road to 350" thread. Bottom line, based on what NAVSEA actually said, is that this isn't a "plan". More just saying what ships could conceivably be reactivated out of the ghost fleets, and that among the carriers, only Kitty isn't totally hopeless. Nobody's saying this is a feasible or practical idea yet.
I don't know about Kitty Hawk, but I know what kind of material shape JFK was in by her last cruise, and she was in horrible condition even then.
I don't know about Kitty Hawk, but I know what kind of material shape JFK was in by her last cruise, and she was in horrible condition even then.
exNavyOffRec
Well-Known Member
Some of the MM's that were on the Kitty Hawk transferred to the carrier I was on before they KH decommissioned, they did not have good things to say about the condition of the engineering equipment, given how bad they said it was they would need to overall and replace most of the equipment.
That matches what I heard about the Kitty Hawk towards the end. I cruised as a MIDN on the duty oiler for her back in 2003-4, and she was struggling even then. Hard to imagine a reality where she could come back, 14 or more years later.