Good article from "The Diplomat"
http://thediplomat.com/2016/11/road-to-350-what-does-the-us-navy-do-anyway/
http://thediplomat.com/2016/11/road-to-350-what-does-the-us-navy-do-anyway/
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Road to 350: What Does the US Navy Do Anyway?
- Thread starter Randy Daytona
- Start date
Nobody in DoN/DoD is really debating the merits of having a bigger fleet and more MBF ships. The debate is what mix we should buy with the budget we're given. Until there's money actually appropriated and a multi-decade shipbuilding plan in place - plus the o&m money to go with it - this is about as relevant as debating the ideal size of Starfleet, and about as likely to happen.
I remember Reagan pulling ships out of mothballs to build up towards the goal of a 600 ship fleet (we didn't quite make it - but still, 15 carriers and 4 battleships was impressive). Question is - do we have a substantial amount of ships sitting in the reserve fleets that are capable of being reactivated quickly?
That would be Colonial Fleet, not Starfleet. (BSG was far superior to any of the ST's, much less SW's)
Even if we could, what would be the cost of modernization? Slapping Harpoons on Iowa battleships in the 80s and retrofitting AEGIS BMD capes to a Spruance Destroyer are not in the same universe. Oh by the way, out biggest costs are in O&M and Manning. More ships just exacerbates that.
I am guessing that costs would be less important than the political benefits of showing results of a greater fleet within a much quicker period of time.
Question about the battleships: was their command and control suites big enough where they could have been used as a dedicated command and control ship instead of the centerpiece of a surface action group? I always wondered if that was possible: could the ships have been used as that as their primary purpose and then the weapons systems manned with reservists when the threat level dictated as to reduce manning costs.
Unfortunately shipyards are not set up to suddenly start sending destroyers down the ways every 10 days like during the Big War. The incoming administration would have to get a massive spending increase and repeal of the BCA past the budget hawks in Congress and then completely rewrite the shipbuilding contracts for BIW and L-I, all of which adds even more cost. Oh and let's not forget - they still haven't solved the small problem of the Columbia-class eating up the Navy's entire ship construction budget for the next decade.
The only major ships the Navy pulled out of mothballs in 80's were the battleships and they had serious material deficiencies that coupled with their massive crews hastened their deactivation after less than a decade back in the fleet.
The few ships we have in mothballs or reserves now are logistics ships, we have virtually no combatant ships in mothballs now with all the Spruance's sunk or scrapped and the 5 decommed Tico's have either met the same fate or will soon.
A smart shipbuilding plan would include building a new class of FFG's in addition to the next generation of CG's.
Like it or not, we've already commissioned ~7 hulls of our next-gen FFG. As for the next CG- I don't know, either Zumwalt is Flt 0 of that class (unlikely), or it will end up looking a lot like Burke Flt III (much more likely).
exNavyOffRec
Well-Known Member
Many ships were also kept in operation long after they should have gone away, Knox class FF's come to mind, engineering nightmare.
I knew many that served on the BB's, engineering wise my friends has no issues with the BB's, what they had said were the guns had lots of manual items that required many sailors.
Arleigh Burkes are a little over 10,000 tons according to wiki
Yes, well...like the rest of America, lots of our military hardware has been getting fatter since WW2.
And then there are those new Japanese "destroyers" with suspiciously flat topped decks.
By doctrine, a cruiser can simultaneously fight two major warfare areas (air, surface, undersea, pick two) because it is manned and equipped for that. A destroyer on the other hand is expected to fight only one. I'm quite certain the Burkes (let alone Zumwalt) have quite a bit more capability than "destroyer" but we call them that because we always have. Of course, we just built an LPH and called in an LHA so whatevs.
Cruiser... destroyer... LHA...
Cruiser... destroyer... LHA...
Yes, but was the ship named in accordance with the doctrine, or was doctrine rewritten to justify calling the ship what they called it?
Flight III Burkes are 9,800 tons according to the wiki. Zumwalts are over 1.5 times as big AND bigger than the Ticos. Doctrine, schmoctrine; if it's bigger than a class of cruiser, it's not a destroyer.