A new version of desired structure of the US Navy’s ships composition has been published online.
The aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71) leads a formation of ships from Carrier Strike Group (CSG) 12 during a maneuvering exercise, Sept. 23, 2014 (Photo: US Navy / Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Katie Lash)
The US Navy has finally published a new version of desired structure of its ships composition – the executive summary of the Navy’s 2016 Force Structure Assessment (FSA). The document was being prepared for a long time and, obviously, its publication was delayed until the announcement of the US presidential election’s results. When Donald Trump, who advocates for the fleet, consisting of 350 ships, won, the US Navy realized that the time ‘to show all the aces’ has come.
The new desired structure is conservative in nature and does not take into account results of a parallel work within the framework of the study of the ‘structure of the fleet of the future’ (the Future Fleet Architecture).
The FSA 2016 reveals the required number of fleet’s ships for solutions of strategic tasks in conditions of limited resources and an acceptable level of risk. The US Navy asked regional Commands to provide their own estimate of the need for the naval forces in the framework of scenarios, covered in documents of the Global Force Management for 2017. So, a fleet, consisting of 653 ships is required in order to meet all their needs with minimal risk and perform routine tasks. This, of course, is a completely unrealistic level.
During an analysis of the requirements of the regional Commands, a series of overlapping, non-priority and non-critical requirements was reduced, and the US Navy came to the number of the fleet of 355 vessels that is 15% more than the level, determined in the FSA 2014. Mainly requests for possible conflicts of high intensity were kept. Apparently, ideas of the ‘postmodern fleet’ in the US Navy are gradually coming to the end.
So, there are results of the FSA 2016 – an objective force of 355 ships – and the changes from the FSA 2014update.
Photo: news.usni.org
The main ‘winner’ is the fleet of attack submarines, which is planned to be replenished with 18 vessels – its growth rate is 47%. Large surface combatants are at the second place (+18.2%). The 12th aircraft carrier also looks impressively.
The post is based on the article appeared at prokhor-tebin.livejournal
They are living in a world of delusion. They will build another carrier that does not work and for every sub the Chinese will build three. Meanwhile debt ballons out of control.
http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/planetoftheapes/images/c/c5/Cathedral.jpg
We know how this ends….Alpha and Omega…..see ya later : )
In the near future….Empire will have underwater drones and then it’s goodbye baby Russian and Chinese submarines. Ya….Evil just seems to win and win on this planet.
If your Russia or China…or even North Korea. Bravery and just rush the f’krs… Overwhelm technology like at Frozen Chosin Reservoir
Bit deluded aren’t we.
Drone technology may be the next great thing but what does that most threaten, submarines? The point is that the U.S., my beloved country, has fallen into the trap of investing into a huge inventory of stuff that may become obsolete within a decade and then what. Carriers are already questionable. If drones make submarines obsolete then what does that say for our big investment in 66 attack subs.
Drones can sit inert under the sea…. Activate on command or on sensor detection. The Submarine would do what to counter it if it detected the Drone? Can a sub send a focused high voltage charge or emp to knock the Drone out? . Drone mines ….same thing. … If the Drone can rise and match speed for a short distance, A ships hull could pick up a mine and never know it until it was to late.
Decades back. ….read an article about land mine with high velocity rod. The mine detects a tank nearby….it leaps into the air above the tank where It senses the heat zone of the tank engine, And fires a hyper velocity rod thru the tanks engine block. Again. …decades ago, ….suggesting they are into programs like this with Robotic weapons.
If the USA can continue at 20 Trillion debt and just print more money, Until their economic system crashes and Foreign power’s decline business with them They can build all the live long day. ..whatever on military side.
That is good for Popular Mechanics !! Maybe the US Navy shoul seek the help of Mack Bolan !!
I hope Trump takes a hard look at military spending. IMO these military planners are in bed with ship builders and their contractors. I spent a career on submarines and we submariners used to say there are two types of warships: submarines and targets. I think surface ships would have a short survival time in a modern major war due to the enemy using ship destroying weapons , such as nuclear armed torpedoes, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles.
Yeah, that’s about the same as what Rickover and every submariner I’ve ever heard speak on the matter said. (Not to mention a fair amount of surface warfare people.) I think even most of the Cold War modelling/wargaming done by the Navy envisioned the sea empty of all sides’ surface ships in the opening weeks of the fight, and that was with 70s/80s tech.
Speaking of Rickover, I had two interviews with him and they were very interesting experiences. Rickover was a strong advocate for reducing wasteful spending by the shipyards and he made regular presentations to Congress regarding wasteful spending. On one particular submarine undergoing overhaul I was tasked with drafting the commanding officers weekly report to Rickover. One section of the report contained the results of a weekly survey performed by the commanding officer regarding the percentage of workers actually engaged in work and it usually was only about 15%.
As sad as the story about the workers is, I guess it doesn’t surprise me when I think about it. It is the height of bureaucratic absurdity that DoD gives commanders no authority over civilian contractors even when they are directly employed in functions vital to their command. I encountered two such instances in Camp Pendleton.
In the one case, the Religious Development Center/Base Command Chaplain was assigned a civilian contractor accountant. He was supposed to handle all budget accounting for them; all they were to do was turn over all receipts to him. He was never seen to do much work. Mostly he played games or fooled around on the internet while munching junk food at a prodigious rate. However, they had been told he was a professional, and they all had other work to do, so they left him alone, assuming he most be doing something. At the end of the Fiscal Year, the Base Commander calls them, furious. He wants to know why they are $6000 over budget, which, for a tiny unit like they were, was a big deal. The Command Chaplain had no idea, of course. The accountant never said anything about it to anyone, so they assumed the numbers were good. The general wants answers, however, so the RDC’s XO and Chief go have a look at the accountant’s computer. What they find is that the guy has done maybe 5 minutes of work, all year. He has entered maybe half a dozen receipts into his spreadsheet, and nothing else. The XO and the Chief sit down and do all the work themselves, and soon see why the general is angry. So the Command Chaplain calls the Base Commander back, explains all this, and of course, he wants to fire the guy straight away and get a replacement. Despite the Chaplain being an 0-6 Captain, he has no authority to do this, even though its his accountant, but he assumes the base commander, a Major General, must have such. But the general just says, “Sorry, I’d love to fire him, but I can’t. Some DoD guy in DC hired the guy, and only he can fire him. I’ll put in a recommendation, but it’s out of my hands beyond that”. The Chaplain wants to know what he can do, and the general says to do what ever he thinks best, they just can’t fire him. They ended up telling him to never set foot in the RDC again, and took away all his car stickers to get on base, but last anyone knew, he was still collecting $80,000 a year from DoD to sit at home.
In the second case, the base JAG and Headquarters and Support Battalion shared a pool of GS legal secretaries to process legal paperwork, which they were terrible at, sometimes because they were lazy, other times because they were spiteful, and deliberately screwed up people’s paperwork. They seemed to take special delight in messing up paperwork for any Marines who’d gotten in trouble, regardless of whether said Marine was in trouble for being a genuine delinquent, or whether he was (as was depressingly often the case) there because of a failure of leadership in his unit. They’d try and delay peoples’ pay, change the level of court martial they got sent to so they’d get a stiffer sentence (since, if two Marines were charges with the same infraction, but one ended up at a Summary and one a Special, the second always got a hasher penalty), mess with re-enlistment codes, type in contradictory things on DD-214s, even go so far as to change the category of discharge ordered by the JA now and again. They were the kind of duplicitous people who would smile and make friendly conversation with someone, even as their fingers worked away on their keyboard to screw them over. They knew they could usually get away with it because the overworked JAG people had too much work to do to go and check every document or chase every irregularity. (The insurgency in Iraq was in full swing, and they were handling two high profile and controversial war crimes trials, plus negligent training deaths and so on.) Once, the secretaries managed to mess up a lot of paperwork for one of the big cases, and the colonel who was head of JAG ordered them to re-do a bunch of it, and finish up the rest of that cases’ paperwork before they moved on to other stuff (the case was time sensitive, and certain unit commanders wanted it swept under as many rugs as possible), and the secretaries basically just refused, and then spent their time gloating in the office about how the colonel couldn’t do anything to them. Which was true, aside from talking their ear off the base commander, or going up the chain to their own superiors at the next level JAG, or HQMC and hoping someone would be able to get the attention of whichever clueless Acting Under Secretary of Defense these parasites actually answered to.
It is equally absurd that while the Secretary of Defense and their immediate underlings and JCS seem to have tremendous legal provision to go after contractors who don’t meet their contractual obligations, they almost never do it. About the only time I’ve ever heard of it happening was when the Air Force put a stop order on all DoD contracts for those Dragon Scale body armour people for fraud. The rest of time, everybody gets way with screwing the military over as much as they want.
It indicates a worrying trend where United States is not indicating its intent to stop meddling in world affairs.
My wishlist would have seen changes where: Aircraft carriers – 5, (1 maintenance, 2 for West Coast, 2 for East Coast)
“Large Surface Combatants” should also include bringing back the Iowa class battleship or better with modern autoloader technology to avoid the problems of explosions from mishandling the 16-inch ammunition. One turret with 3 16-inch guns will be kept to engage surface ships, the other 2 would be replaced by the kind of missiles we see in aircraft carrier killer ships like the Moskva. They would be covered with anti-aircraft defenses like a Christmas tree decorations with anti-submarine capability and use the best nuclear-propulsion technology out there.
Basically the return of the battleships that will do great for defending the continental United States territory proper and will form the bulk of the US navy.
Overall though real improvements will be obtained only if Trump can reign in the ridiculous overbudgeting and corrupt military industrial complex so we don’t get the current joke of ‘future’ ships with exploding engines and Zumwalts breaking down in the Panama canal created by nobodies with pHds who have no practical experience of warfare.
(Full disclosure I am a navy engineer(MM2 (SW)))
Here’s the thing: Carriers are a bigger deterrent to war than nuclear missiles. The presence of a carrier in a “hot spot” alone has ended more wars than you and I will ever know.
But that doesn’t make the 5 o’clock news of course.
The battleship will never return unless we are being over ran, so that means, no… And the idea that you suggest has already been tried with the Iowa class.
I have total faith that trump will reign in budget spending and boot the engineers that have no business building ships. The Ford class is(in my opinion), the greatest offense to ship engineering, its a disgrace… Haven’t these engineers ever heard that water and electricity doesn’t mix? Zumwalt is up there too but it has a minor mission so it could get a pass. In the end, if I had a choice between going into combat on a Ford class or combat in the desert, I’ll take the desert… It’s that bad.
Another Navy personnel has commented here that with aircraft carriers, they trained hard to launch aircraft under 35 minutes, because they knew in a battle with an equivalent Navy like Russia, it would be all they have before they would be sunk. Carriers present a big and easy target to the latest in hypersonic anti-ship missiles.
Here’s the thing… Propaganda is stupid. Hypersonic missiles do not pose a sinking threat to a carrier. Here’s the deal: 1. A missile does not carry a very big bomb load. 2. A hypersonic missile would have a even smaller payload than a regular missile. 3. A carrier is big. 4. A carrier would indeed may not be able to conduct air operations after a sucessful missile strike. 5. A missile wouldn’t hit below the waterline. 6. You want to sink a carrier? Grab a diesel powered submarine, have it be at the right place at the right time, and have it fire a modern torpedo. 7. A single modern torpedo, even if its a bad strike, will break the keel of a carrier. This will either sink the carrier or render it floating scrap metal because fixing a keel virtually mean rebuilding the hull… Not cheap, not worth the time nor effort. The russians and chinese don’t have hypersonic missiles yet. They state it as a goal, but are still far far away from that goal.
Large Surface Combatants are just large easy targets. 80 PERCENT OF CARRIER TASK FORCE IS DEFENSIVE. Perhaps Robot operated Iowa class. But what to do? No missions I think except bombard helpless people. New reality is Stealth, Intelligence, and Agility. That equals Submarines, Drones and Aircraft. Bombers and artillery are good for bouncing rubble. Capital ships are very vunerable to air attack. Think Backfire.(NATO). These days war is getting to be obsolete. Think of how stupid the whole Bush Chaney thing was. What a disaster based on some nonsense about democracy. Things were fine. Not perfect but at least secular to a point.
Los Angeles class(the bulk of the US navy’s attack submarines) is starting to get very old, thats why they want new attack submarines.
An extra aircraft carrier is unnecessary.
You can never have enough destroyers and cruisers. These are the workhorses of the fleet and main protectors of the carriers. The more the better. Plus they are relatively cheap.
Combat logistics force is ships that do resupply, like AOE’s. Having these ships is a plus as it will reduce our reliance on other countries/fleets to resupply our own ships.
Amphibious warfare ships are obsolete and should be done away entirely. We don’t “storm the beach” anymore. We use planes to bring troops in. It’s faster and cheaper. But the marines are always a stickler for tradition.
Our wonderful government NOT spending tax payer billions on our middle class, poor, veterans, elderly, and mentally challenged. Instead using our taxpaper money to line the pockets of the politicians and corporations. We spend more money on the military than the top 7 countries of the world combined.
A couple of well placed 50 megaton nukes(or larger if possible) on the ocean floors of both the Atlantic and Pacific and this whole inventory is ,…..bye, bye.
I’d hate to see all those fish die though.