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QDR to Nix 2 CSGs
- Thread starter Mumbles
- Start date
Since DOD is the largest 'discretionary' part of the federal budget, it's the easiest place to find money... Carriers are high value assets that require huge amounts of money to maintain and operate.
When it comes time to recapitalize all the assets that have been worn out during OIF/OEF, the Navy's bill is going to be small-potatoes compared to the bill the Army will give Congress to replace all the stuff that has been broken or worn out during the war.
Based on the current threats to the United States, there is no near peer competitor to the US Navy. China is a regional threat, but is not a blue water threat for the next 10 years or so, therefore cutting CSGs can save a lot of money but not imperil the United States national defense.
The current strategy of fixing failed states so AQAM can not get a foothold does not require continuous deployments by CSGs. It requires boots on the ground and airpower available.
Look past the 'this is the way we've always done it' mentality and try to view the world through a more responsive CSG posture. Rather than deploying CSGs continuously in a rotation, deploy them as needed.
Before you 'forward presence' folks jump all over me, I'm not saying we don't deploy carriers, but consider, why do we need a 2.0 presence deployed continuously? Why do we have an East Coast carrier in the Med??? Not much going on there.
Schedule the deployment so you have a carrier where you need it, when you need it, and not just 'routine deployments' of two carriers continuously. This plan may result in less port time for all of us, but since a nuke is cheaper to keep at sea than in port, the cost savings are evident.
So, how do we get there? As a carrier is due to go into RCOH, maybe mothball it instead. This discussion was done about the Carl Vinson a few years ago. It was either rehab the JFK or RCOH the Vinson; the Navy elected to go with Vinson.
The plan is to kill one CSG, not an Air Wing. Right now there are 10 Airwings and 11 CSGs. Kill one CSG and you can continue as we are doing until the Ford Class starts coming down the ways. Since an RCOH takes 3+ years to get through the yard, it’s a good 5 years before a CVN is taken out of the deployment rotation, gets through the process and is ready to deploy again. The article speculates that this shortage of CVNs is through 2015, which is about 5 years from now. That number seems awfully similar to how long it takes to get through RCOH and back into the Fleet. Therefore net loss of carriers for deployment is ZERO!!!
Plus If you modify the deployment schedule of the CSGs you can save the money needed to recapitalize the force for the future.
Is killing CSGs smart? That is a debatable answer. I'll go with the thought that the first question the President asks in a crisis is 'where is the nearest carrier?' But at the same time, I like to think I'm a realist and the U.S. needs to make some hard decisions about the economy in the future. The Flight Hour Program was just a first step. The U.S. has a big bill coming due when we finally redeploy from Iraq and Afghanistan and the Navy is going to have to take its share of lumps when the check comes due.
When it comes time to recapitalize all the assets that have been worn out during OIF/OEF, the Navy's bill is going to be small-potatoes compared to the bill the Army will give Congress to replace all the stuff that has been broken or worn out during the war.
Based on the current threats to the United States, there is no near peer competitor to the US Navy. China is a regional threat, but is not a blue water threat for the next 10 years or so, therefore cutting CSGs can save a lot of money but not imperil the United States national defense.
The current strategy of fixing failed states so AQAM can not get a foothold does not require continuous deployments by CSGs. It requires boots on the ground and airpower available.
Look past the 'this is the way we've always done it' mentality and try to view the world through a more responsive CSG posture. Rather than deploying CSGs continuously in a rotation, deploy them as needed.
Before you 'forward presence' folks jump all over me, I'm not saying we don't deploy carriers, but consider, why do we need a 2.0 presence deployed continuously? Why do we have an East Coast carrier in the Med??? Not much going on there.
Schedule the deployment so you have a carrier where you need it, when you need it, and not just 'routine deployments' of two carriers continuously. This plan may result in less port time for all of us, but since a nuke is cheaper to keep at sea than in port, the cost savings are evident.
So, how do we get there? As a carrier is due to go into RCOH, maybe mothball it instead. This discussion was done about the Carl Vinson a few years ago. It was either rehab the JFK or RCOH the Vinson; the Navy elected to go with Vinson.
The plan is to kill one CSG, not an Air Wing. Right now there are 10 Airwings and 11 CSGs. Kill one CSG and you can continue as we are doing until the Ford Class starts coming down the ways. Since an RCOH takes 3+ years to get through the yard, it’s a good 5 years before a CVN is taken out of the deployment rotation, gets through the process and is ready to deploy again. The article speculates that this shortage of CVNs is through 2015, which is about 5 years from now. That number seems awfully similar to how long it takes to get through RCOH and back into the Fleet. Therefore net loss of carriers for deployment is ZERO!!!
Plus If you modify the deployment schedule of the CSGs you can save the money needed to recapitalize the force for the future.
Is killing CSGs smart? That is a debatable answer. I'll go with the thought that the first question the President asks in a crisis is 'where is the nearest carrier?' But at the same time, I like to think I'm a realist and the U.S. needs to make some hard decisions about the economy in the future. The Flight Hour Program was just a first step. The U.S. has a big bill coming due when we finally redeploy from Iraq and Afghanistan and the Navy is going to have to take its share of lumps when the check comes due.
Raptor2216
Registered User
Because F-15's and Rhinos are old technology. The superbugs go for just a little less than the JSF and the JSF is newer technology...so why get the old? The JSF is also an international venture and that's helping to keep the cost down. We should take all we can get. Who knows what the future will hold?
When you have the need to know, then you'll get one. My professional opinion, we need the F-22 and the JSF, our current fighters will not be sufficient to dominate the fight in the long-term.
The problem with assuming that will be situation for long is that reversing the decision to draw down the carrier fleet is a very long and hard one to turn around. As a matter of fact, we have proven that it is almost irreversible given our history since WWII. By the time we find that we need more CVN's it may be too late to do so, finding us in a bad place.
There is only one semi-failed state that we are 'fixing' right now and it is doubtful we would expand that effort beyond Afghanistan. Many of the resources are being built to fight that particular war, not a war 20 years from now.
Good question, where are carriers 'needed'? Kind of hard to do that when often you really don't know when or where they would be needed. Part of the reason we have some just 'steaming around'.
That is the Navy's idea right now, the QDR appears to be heading towards suggesting more cuts. Different animal.
It's gonna take 4-6 months to move 30K troopers to Afghanistan ... in WW2 we could have done 100,000+ troops or more in 2-3 months ... in any theater. So much for progress and determination and will ...
Question: what's the FIRST thing any President has asked over the last 60 years when the shit hits the fan ANYWHERE in the world ???
Hint: "WHERE ARE THE CARRIERS" ... ??!!??!!
Question: what's the FIRST thing any President has asked over the last 60 years when the shit hits the fan ANYWHERE in the world ???
Hint: "WHERE ARE THE CARRIERS" ... ??!!??!!
War on two fronts hasn't been part of our strategic doctrine in quite some time and it's hard to make a case that OIF and OEF meet the concept as it was imagined at the time.
Either way, QDR =/= policy, so everyone settle down already.
Brett
I just think it's like selling your Blackberry to get an iPhone. Big picture, they both make phone calls (which is what they are used for 90% of the time), but one is a little fancier.
The article states that this cut in CSGs will be until CVN-78 comes on line in 2015, therefore the way the author describes the situation, it will be short-term vice a longer term decline.
Now if that verbiage about waiting until CVN-78 comes on line, was not in the article, completely different story, but this is, in my opinion, a temporary solution to funding shortfall.
This is not another Truman/USS United States situation. This is simply shutting down one CSG earlier than expected until the newer ships come on line.
The QDR is used to direct future spending programs, therefore it IS used to scope the war 20 years from now.
To counter your other point, we are not 'building resources' to fight in either OEF or OIF with the exception of the MRAPs. All the equipment we are employing over there was on-line prior to the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
We are buying more of certain items (Styker and HUMVEES of note) but this was all technology that we possessed prior to OIF. So the QDR has little bearing on the equipment that we are employing in CENTCOM for the next 5 years.
From a strategy standpoint, you do no NEED to have two carriers steaming around.
In a mature theater like Iraq, you do not NEED any carriers in the Gulf. The Air Force can handle the requirement for Air Power on their own. Now I'm aware Navy leadership will not like that answer but it's the truth.
The one thing carriers have over the Air Force is immediate response and flexibility in 'forced entry' type environments. Since a carrier can be pretty much anywhere in the world (from San Diego or Norfolk) in less than three weeks, there is that rapid response needed for the US.
In planning for operations, you must consider risk. The risk of not having a carrier forward deployed is the response time. Can the US leadership risk not having a carrier on station for three weeks vice one week? That's the decision for senior leadership of the United States and it looks like they are going to risk response time and save the money.
This is in reference to cutting a carrier not an Airwing. The staff at SECDEF writes the QDR, therefore, the Navy sent folks to write the USN section of the QDR. They'll have some guidance from SECDEF based upon what he and the President have said, but if it's in the QDR, then it's the Navy position. So I don't know how you can say that the Navy's position is different from what the QDR says. Now individuals in Navy leadership may not agree with the direction that they have been given for scoping out the future force, but the civilian leadership makes the final call as to the shape of the future military force.
a) Me-262 doesn't count; never came off the line in quantities to make a difference. And Hitler's Germans may have made the jet engine first, but our Germans built The Bomb first.
b) Zero was only effective as it was early on because it was designed to out-turn the enemy at the extreme expense of many other combat-critical qualities. Pilots were also very well trained, and they were trained to fight their aircraft exactly the way it was meant to be used. Zero was a maximization of modern design, not so much technological revolution (something I dare say is, "typical" of Japan, even today).
c)P-51 were an USAAF internal battle, and I believe ultimately mandated by the civilian leadership.
My impression is that while funding may be reflective of state of readiness, it has always come down to quality of training and strategic thought of the time.
Obviously, we need to stay ahead. I just don't like your examples.
Spekkio
He bowls overhand.
[quote="flash]The problem with assuming that will be situation for long is that reversing the decision to draw down the carrier fleet is a very long and hard one to turn around. As a matter of fact, we have proven that it is almost irreversible given our history since WWII. By the time we find that we need more CVN's it may be too late to do so, finding us in a bad place. [/quote] Someone mentioned that we produce carriers at a rate of ~2/decade. If we went full-out wartime economy ala WWII, wouldn't this timeline be able to be significantly reduced?
I think a "full out wartime economy" is a fairy tale in this day and age with the entitlement spending currently in the Federal budget. Maybe we could carry that kind of debt if you got the whole country to buy war bonds again, but who would we be going to war against that would justify that kind of spending? China? Oh, wait . . .
That's a pretty dumb way of looking at it. Using your analogy we might as well still be using Zach Morriss phones because they make calls, and that's what they're used for 90% of the time anyway right? There is a reason why we have the most powerful military in the world, and it's not because we settled for what's "good enough" until our enemies make something better.
Concur with your thinking. In the 1980's the military operated on the 'two theater war' for force requirement planning.
In the 2004 National Military Strategy that construct was changed to "4-2-1-1" which was conduct shaping operations in 4 theaters, while we conduct kinetic operations in 2 theaters, of those two theaters 1 we will win decisively and finally we'll defend the homeland (second 1).
The new National Defense Strategy (2008) scopes our mission as: Defend the homeland, Win the long war, Promote security, Deter conflict and Win our nation's wars. By disconnecting our strategy from a force structuring requirement (like 4-2-1-1 or two-theater wars), DOD can meet the goals however they see fit.
The new National Military Strategy is due to Congress by 15 FEB of even numbered years so I would expect that this document will contain a lot of addressing the 'capabilities' we need, not specific numbers of platforms.
This way you can say you are meeting the requirements of the CinC but you don't have anything in writing saying "12 CSGs", "20 F-22 squadrons", "85 BCTs", etc.
We're going to have a drawdown much like the 'peace dividend' following the fall of the Berlin Wall.
In my opinion many of our new platforms that are coming on line will be relatively safe. The SuperHornet is pretty much bought and paid for and the Helo Conops (or whatever the hell the R/S program is now called) is also too far down the road to kill off with any cost savings.
The Growler is a capability that the other services can not provide so we can't kill it.
I don't know how well the P-8 may survive the budget cuts since it's so new it's easy to turn-off or scale back without much sunk cost being wasted. I would expect that with the GWOT threat from the sea being considered highly credible, and then I think it will survive.
The JSF is being funded by three Services as well as foreign countries. If DOD kills the program then they will have to refund a sh!t-load of money to the allies that bought in; therefore JSF is pretty safe.
With platforms become more capable and complex and therefore most costly DOD has some hard choices to make. Do we want to continue with our reliance on state-of-the-art technology for all our platforms or do we go with a larger mix of a majority of lower-tech platforms (F-15 and DDG as examples) and just have a small portion of high end capabilities (F-22 & DDG-1000) that can be brought to bear in the limited confrontations that we are involved with now.
The downside to that plan is China is watching!!
That is a gross over-simplification and a flawed view on things, much to narrow based on very incomplete information.
Being government I have seen too many 'temporary' fixes become permanent ones. If we did fine with one less for 5 years why not more?
I think you are forgetting many of the UAV's, Project Liberty MC-12's and the M-ATV's that are being procured today. These purchases are for more 'permissive' operating enviroments that we would find on a conventional battlefield and are mostly geared for today's wars. Most of UAV's can and will be used in the future, but the speed and scale of their procurement has been accelerated and expanded directly as a result of the wars.
Don't get me wrong, I think they are good purchases and the DoD is largley striking a good balance right now, but a significant batch of the equipment we are now purchasing can only be used in a more permissive operating enviroment, especially for air assets.
From a practical standpoint you do, or else you would always be behind the power curve when it comes to reacting to events. And you would have crews that have little concept of how to really operate. You have to train to how you fight, or else we will end up with a fleet of Kuznetsov's that can't do shit.
A little more nuanced than you may realize. There can be significant problems with ramp space, host nation restrictions and resupply that land-based aircraft have to deal with constantly. The airpower that a carrier supplies is nowhere near as affected by these constraints and without that our resources over there would be even more strained than they are now. The opening stages of OEF would not have been run as effectively or quickly without flattops off the coast.
Three weeks is much too late for many types of operations nowadays, from combat to humanitarian relief.
Not necessarily, it is the Defense position and the Navy may have lost out in an internal battle with respect to that decision. A perfect example is the F-22 and the USAF, their position for a very long time was contrary to the larger DoD position. That is until the Secretary Gates fired the leadership and appointed ones that ended up agreeing with him. The 'Revolt of the Admirals' comes to mind too.
It is true that the civilian leadership makes the final decision, but don't forget that Congress is part of the civilian leadership and they often throw the DoD's ideas back in it's face and do their own damn thing. I would not be surprised if they do the same with a proposal to reduce the carrier fleet.
We don't have the same lead time nowadays that we did 60 years ago. Weapon systems are much more complex and the skills needed to build them have increased along with their complexity. We might be able to crank them out a bit quicker but it would take a significant investment in people and infrastructure that we would probably be very unwilling to make, especially for the length of timem it takes to make a carrier nowadays. Remember, we now have only one shipyard that makes them, we can only push so many through.
I never argued to cut training cycles; I discussed the possibility of reducing the carrier presence overseas to accommodate the loss of one CSG due to funding. Having been an East Coast guy, I've spent more time in the Med than in the Gulf. Why? What threat is there in the Med to US national interests that require an entire CSG?
Train the CSG up and leave them in a surge status. Have one CSG deployed to CENTCOM AOR, since that's where it's needed and have the next ready to go. Deploy the second as the first is getting ready to come off the line so you can have relief on station. You don't need a second carrier running around the Med while one carrier is in the Gulf.
The carrier deployment schedule is based on 'carrier presence' requirements that are all cold-war based. With a shift to a more strategy-centric planning construct as the GCC level vice the old contingency planning model, there may be relief from the artificial 'presence' number placed upon the Navy.
As I stated previous, the carrier will be used for forced entry operations, like the opening stages of OEF. Once the theater matures, you may not require the presence of a carrier as units such as the Air Force arrive in theater. Another option was be to disembark the AirWing to operate ashore if the Air Force is short of aircraft.
As for your stated MOG concerns for the CENTCOM AOR, they are all valid, but my point was that not every situation requires a carrier parked off the coast continuously. There may be better uses for this flexibility a CSG brings.
Flash, I'm agreeing with you. My statement regarding "NEED" is based upon the risk of not having it. If USG decides they want to save money and cut stuff then there is risk involved. That risk could be longer response time for a carrier to a crisis. It's not our call to decide what is in the nation’s best interests to responding to HADR missions. Usually we will respond and we'll try to get there as quick as we can, but we don't always go. For every tsunami incident there is a Darfur. If the US decides to wait three weeks rather than one, then that is a political decision, not a military decision.