Road to 350: What Does the US Navy Do Anyway?

[Uncle Fester]

Here’s a model: 12x CVNs. Each CSG does 120 days at sea followed by 245 days in port for repair, refit, workup. Of those 120 days at sea, up to 30 are in transit. Each month you put a different CSG to sea, and bring another one back to homeport. So in total, you have minimum 3x CSGs in theater at any given time, with a couple others in transit. Once a month, SECDEF would potentially have the flexibility to have 5x CSGs at sea as they are crossing paths (1 outbound, 1 inbound, and 3 on station) which gives SECDEF options for how and where to send them. Sailors have a 120:245 ratio of sea to homeport annually, giving time for training, family, etc.

Thoughts?

What are you going to do when the boats go into the yards? At any time one is in RCOH (4+ years), at a minimum, plus the extensive yard time required between cruises.

 

[Hair Warrior]

What are you going to do when the boats go into the yards? At any time one is in RCOH (4+ years), at a minimum, plus the extensive yard time required between cruises.

Great question for the DoD and Congress. So pull one CVN out of the rotation. Then, ask: Can the Navy meet NDS/NMS objectives with one fewer CVNs at full operating capability in blue water, when you’d otherwise have 3x CVN at sea? Or, is it worth the cost to acquire a 13th CVN plus man, train, and equip 5,000-8,000 more personnel to fill that gap? Or, can you partially fill the gap (inferior) with a plussed up ARG w/ a new LHA and F-35s, and in doing so, accept risk in order to lower costs?

 

[nittany03]

An Ensign saying "in my experience . . ."

 

[Hair Warrior]

An Ensign saying "in my experience . . ."

I agree that concept may be ironic, but I didn’t say that phrase.

I am making the Navy’s agenda my agenda (i.e. road to 350+).

So, what’s the roadmap? Absent one, give me your (collective) ideas.

 

[Uncle Fester]

I agree that concept may be ironic, but I didn’t say that phrase.

I am making the Navy’s agenda my agenda (i.e. road to 350+).

So, what’s the roadmap? Absent one, give me your (collective) ideas.

There are a lot of ideas out there, from people who are paid to think deep thoughts like this and are certainly smarter than me. Problem is, all of them require trade offs. If there was a solution that didn't require trade-offs, it would’ve already been done.

We can’t abruptly shit out more boats, planes, and the people to man them. And telling COCOMs “no” is a political and strategic gamble. As is forward basing. Nor does DoD or DoN decide their own budget.

We got here with a lot of “good idea at the time” and “lesser of two evil” steps over the last 17 years, and saying “350” a lot won’t undo them.

 

[exNavyOffRec]

Great question for the DoD and Congress. So pull one CVN out of the rotation. Then, ask: Can the Navy meet NDS/NMS objectives with one fewer CVNs at full operating capability in blue water, when you’d otherwise have 3x CVN at sea? Or, is it worth the cost to acquire a 13th CVN plus man, train, and equip 5,000-8,000 more personnel to fill that gap? Or, can you partially fill the gap (inferior) with a plussed up ARG w/ a new LHA and F-35s, and in doing so, accept risk in order to lower costs?

you also need to pull at least one out for a dry-docked overhaul that can last up to about a year, and then you have the ones that are in the extended pier-side overhaul which is about 2, so it wouldn't be uncommon if there were 5 carriers unavailable at any one time.

The CVN's also have to be aware of how much fuel they are using, a CVN I was on was off track but due to some circumstances that prevented us from going to sea whe then became on track, years ago we have a few CGN's that were limited in operations due to excessive fuel usage until they could do further testing to verify how much fuel they had left.

 

[picklesuit]

Don’t forget the ugly fact that maintenance availability never goes as planned. It was a YUUUGE deal when the Truman left the yards on time in 2017. First carrier in 16 years to do so...we even shot No Loads in the yards to get ahead of schedule...

 

[nittany03]

The CVN's also have to be aware of how much fuel they are using, a CVN I was on was off track but due to some circumstances that prevented us from going to sea whe then became on track, years ago we have a few CGN's that were limited in operations due to excessive fuel usage until they could do further testing to verify how much fuel they had left.

Is there a safe-for-AW summary of how that works? Didn't realize Mom needed to track how many neutrons she had available.

 

[Brett327]

Is there a safe-for-AW summary of how that works? Didn't realize Mom needed to track how many neutrons she had available.

You thought they just ran the plant until the ship went DIW?

 

[exNavyOffRec]

Is there a safe-for-AW summary of how that works? Didn't realize Mom needed to track how many neutrons she had available.

I think it is basically like they track aircraft use, by hours. The CVN's track how many hours the reactors are operating since we know how long they will last, of course they do some conversions since running a Reactor at 25% for 4 hours is different then running at 50% for 4 hours.

I believe for aircraft is it all by hours right and not how fast the aircraft is going? or does it include takeoffs and landings too?

 

[exNavyOffRec]

Don’t forget the ugly fact that maintenance availability never goes as planned. It was a YUUUGE deal when the Truman left the yards on time in 2017. First carrier in 16 years to do so...we even shot No Loads in the yards to get ahead of schedule...

I think I was on the CVN 16 years ago that that left on time!

 

[nittany03]

You thought they just ran the plant until the ship went DIW?

Uhh . . . no, but thanks for insulting my intelligence anyway. I thought there was a fudge factor built in whereby they could do whatever and wouldn't arrive in the yards with a dead plant as long as they arrived in the yards on schedule.

Come on. Seriously?

 

[Brett327]

It’s not like the plant expends fuel at a constant rate. Bottom line, as with everything else to do with the plant, they track that shit pretty diligently, particularly when it’s getting close to RCOH. When I was on Lincoln, there was lots of hand wringing about putting too much demand on the plant because it had to make it through two cruises before RCOH.

 

[exNavyOffRec]

It’s not like the plant expends fuel at a constant rate. Bottom line, as with everything else to do with the plant, they track that shit pretty diligently, particularly when it’s getting close to RCOH. When I was on Lincoln, there was lots of hand wringing about putting too much demand on the plant because it had to make it through two cruises before RCOH.

Hand wringing is putting it very nice from the briefs I was in, "lucky" for us there were some delays in the shipyard.

 

[Hair Warrior]

It’s not like the plant expends fuel at a constant rate. Bottom line, as with everything else to do with the plant, they track that shit pretty diligently, particularly when it’s getting close to RCOH. When I was on Lincoln, there was lots of hand wringing about putting too much demand on the plant because it had to make it through two cruises before RCOH.

Would a fundamental switch to shorter, more frequent cruises by CVNs — as SECDEF suggests in that article Randy Daytona posted — be better, worse, or the same in terms of stress on that power plant?