FY27 Five Year Plan

If you want to read a sales brochure that raves about the magnificence of the Navy, check out the latest 30 year shipbuilding plan.
 
Here are some tidbits from the most recent five year plan for the years 2027-2031 inclusive.[1]
 
Battleship (Qty= 3, $14.5B ea) – Setting aside the reality that these will never be built, the plan is to have three built within the next five years while our high priority, “must get hulls in the water” frigate will only complete four?  There’s some serious delusion at work here.
 
Burke (Qty= 7, $3.61B ea) – Sure, these ships are long since obsolete, non-stealthy, overloaded, have no growth margins, lack close in weapons, and have sub-optimal radars but we’re going to build seven of them anyway because it’s the only ship we know how to build.  Along those same lines, I’ve read that the Navy is going to restart the F6F Hellcat production line because it was successful and we know how to build them.
 
NSC-FF Frigate (Qty= 4, $1.76B ea) – This is our most urgent shipbuilding project, according to the Navy, and we can only get four in five years?  Does this give a feel for our ability to replace sunken ships during a war?  Check out that price!  That’s a long ways from the numbers the Navy was publicly tossing around!  Remember when the Navy was claiming they would build Constellations for around $800M ea?  Now, we’re building slightly upgunned NSC patrol boats for twice that cost!  Yikes!
 
Virginia SSN (Qty= 10, $6.3B ea) – Setting aside the fact that we’ve been unable to maintain a build rate of two subs per year and now we think we’ll build two plus an SSBN each year, do you remember when the Navy proudly (and fraudulently!) claimed it was building Virginia’s for $2B apiece?  Well, now the cost is up to $6.3B and, of course, that’s a lowball Navy estimate.
 
Landing Ship Medium LSM (Qty= 23, $298M ea) – I have yet to hear any viable Concept of Operations for these sitting ducks and yet we’re going to build 23 of them?  I wouldn’t want to be a Marine in the near future!  Shipping on one of those promises to be a one-way trip and a short one at that.
 
Unmanned – Paraphrasing Star Wars, “The delusion is strong in this one.”  From the Navy’s shipbuilding plan,
 

The United States faces a strategic inflection point where peer adversaries have achieved naval mass that the U.S. cannot match with traditional shipbuilding alone.[1]

This statement is utterly false.  We can easily match China’s shipbuilding but we choose not to for reasons that only an insane person could agree with.  This is purely a self-inflicted disadvantage.  We’ve discussed the many ways we could easily and hugely increase our shipbuilding so I won’t belabor it here.
 
The Navy’s solution?  Why, unmanned, of course!
 

To counter this and deliver warfighting capability fast, the USV FoS strategy outlines a rapid, competitive path to deliver affordable, scalable, and adaptable unmanned surface capabilities … [1]

False!  The Navy’s unmanned vessels do NOT delivery warfighting capability.  They are largely unarmed.
 
Retirements - What about retirements?  The five year plan calls for 58 new ships and 46 retirements.  That’s a net gain of 12 ships.  Take that number at face value.  It’s a gain of 12 ships over 5 years which is 2 ships per year.  Compared to Chinese shipbuilding rates, that’s embarrassingly pathetic.  Still, it’s an improvement.  Or is it?  When we start looking at what types of ships will be added and lost, the picture is not good.
 
- 10 CG/DDG will be retired and 10 DDG added.  That’s a net gain of 0 for our top of the line surface combatants.
 
-  Counting all combat ships (carriers, surface ships, attack subs), we’ll gain 22 and lose 25 for a net loss of 3.
 
The numerical gains will be in auxiliary ships, not combat ships.  Auxiliaries are vital but they add no firepower to the fleet.
 
 
Summary
 
Though I’m sure they didn’t intend it as such, the 30 year plan perfectly documents the Navy’s delusions, fantasies, runaway costs, and schedule slippages.  In that sense, it’s quite informative and interesting.  As far as reality … well, that’s not included in the document. 
 
 
 
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[1]Department of the Navy, ”US Navy Shipbuilding Plan”, May 2026, Tables p.15 & 40

USS Ford Deployment

USS Ford just returned from a post-Vietnam record deployment of 320 days.  ComNavOps has repeatedly stated that deployments are of no value and the fleet should be kept home, undergoing continuous, intensive training and maintenance.  The only exception is to perform specific missions and then immediately return.  So, what value (worthiness) did we get from Ford’s record setting deployment?  How much of the deployment was justified? 
 
To review, here’s a timeline of Ford’s deployment activities, as best I can reconstruct it.  As you scan it, ask yourself if the activities are worthwhile.
 
 
24-Jun-2025 began deployment to European Command area of responsibility.
 
19-Jul-2025 arrived Mediterranean
 
17-Aug-2025 North Sea for joint exercises in the Arctic Circle with the Royal Norwegian Navy's HNoMS Thor Heyerdahl (frigate) and HNoMS Maud (tanker), Germany's Hamburg (frigate), and France's Aquitaine (frigate) and Somme (tanker)
 
12-Sep-2025 Oslo, Norway port visit
 
22-26-Sep-2025 NATO Neptune Strike 25-3 exercise
 
24-Oct-2025 Caribbean
 
11-Dec-2025 assisted seizure of a tanker off the coast of Venezuela
 
3-Jan-2026 provided support for Operation Absolute Resolve off Venezuela
 
9-Jan-2026 provided support for Operation Southern Spear in Caribbean
 
27-Feb-2026 off coast of Israel
 
28-Feb-2026 began strikes as part of Operation Epic Fury
 
12-Mar-2026 laundry room fire
 
23-Mar-2026 Souda Bay, Greece, maintenance and repairs
 
28-Mar-2026 Split, Croatia for repairs
 
2-Apr-2026 left Croatia
 
 
 
Let’s analyze the worthiness (value) of Ford’s deployment.  There were two worthwhile activities that could be classified as justifiable missions:
 

• Operation Southern Spear/Absolute Resolve in the Caribbean for the Venezuela confrontation (3 months)
• Operating Epic Fury (Iran strikes) (2 weeks)

 
Even that’s misleading.  The only aspect of the Caribbean operations that was actually necessary as far as requiring a carrier was Operation Absolute Resolve, the capture of Maduro so the 3 month deployment to the area only required a carrier for one day.  Let’s be generous and say 3 weeks were required for the operation to account for transit times and a short period on station prior to the actual execution of the operation.
 
This gives us a maximum of 3.5 months of worthwhile, mission type activity out of an 11 month deployment and, more realistically, 5 weeks of worthwhile, mission type activity out of an 11 month deployment.
 
The rest was useless.
 
The rest was pointless.
 
The rest was a waste.
 
 
The 11 month deployment got us two worthwhile missions (5 weeks) and resulted in a carrier with significant burn damage and burned out sailors, a worn out air wing, and 11 months of deferred maintenance which will cause problems down the road.  Ford will now likely be unavailable for deployment for a year or more.  In contrast, with a home port model, Ford would be continuously mission ready, year round, less the occasional scheduled dry docking every few years.
 
How many of Ford’s sailors will re-up knowing another year long deployment could well be in their future?
 
Home porting (Norfolk) would have allowed the Ford to reach the Caribbean/Venezuela quickly and reached Israel for Epic Fury much quicker.  With constant home port training and maintenance, Ford would have been better prepared for both missions and, debatably, the laundry fire might not have occurred.   Perhaps the persistent toilet problems would also have been resolved although that one sounds like an idiotic design that is never going to work.
 
I don’t think the uselessness of deployments is even debatable, at this point.  Each deployment simply proves my contention.  Each carrier laid up for months or years suffering the effects of deferred maintenance simply proves my contention.  Let’s bring the fleet home and get it back into fighting shape.
 
Thank you, USS Ford, for demonstrating the uselessness of deployments.

Ready! Ready? Not Ready …

It is the job of the military to have contingency plans for every conceivable scenario sitting on the shelf, ready to execute and to ensure that the force is properly trained, maintained, and equipped to execute those plans on a (figurative) moment’s notice.
 
When the Administration decided to strike Iran, it should have required nothing more than to pick a plan off the shelf and assemble the required assets.  We should have been ready and able.
 
Let’s digress for a moment.  How many aircraft carriers did we use during Desert Storm?  The answer is 6.  They were:
 

• USS Midway
• USS Roosevelt
• USS America
• USS Kennedy
• USS Saratoga
• USS Ranger

 
Compare that assemblage of power to the current Iran conflict.  How many carriers are active for this?  The answer is 2.  They are:
 

• USS Ford
• USS Lincoln

 
And Ford was at the end of a long deployment and overdue to return home.  We should also note that air wings during Desert Storm were larger than today’s air wings which makes the two carriers for Iran more like one and a half carriers!
 
An obvious question arises;  did operational requirements only need two carriers or were there only two carriers physically available?  Not knowing the detailed operational plan, we can’t say for sure but a common sense assessment sure seems to indicate that we needed more especially when we compare the needs of Desert Storm to this conflict.
 
Consider:
 
-We seem to lack sufficient air and naval coverage to keep the strait open.
-We clearly lack the air coverage to protect our bases and our Middle East allies from Iranian drones and missiles.
-USS Ford is approaching its one year deployment anniversary which clearly says that the vessel was used because no other carriers were available.
 
 
Were we ready or were we caught unprepared? 
 
A peripheral piece of evidence is the attempted deployment of a MEU during the early Ukraine conflict.  Despite having around 30 amphibious ships, the Navy was unable to form a ARG and provide ships for the MEU.  This suggests that the Navy is nowhere near combat ready and, further, has zero surge capability.
 
One might also ask why the Japan based carrier was not moved to the Middle East?  It’s not as if anyone believes that carrier serves any legitimated purpose in Japan.
 
I can’t offer any definitive answers but the circumstantial evidence suggests that the Navy is woefully unprepared for combat.

This Is Not How You Fight A War

We have, in many posts, discussed how to conduct a war and have noted that the US, and the West, repeatedly fail to finish their wars which results in having to refight them down the road (see, “Ending War – True Victory”).  Consider the following quote from a Redstate article related to an attack by Iran against US ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz.
 

U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) eliminated inbound threats and targeted Iranian military facilities responsible for attacking U.S. forces including missile and drone launch sites; command and control locations; and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance nodes.[1]

You might be initially tempted to think this is a good, forceful response but give the statement some more thought.  It’s revealing and damning.  After being attacked, we struck various Iranian facilities as listed in the statement.  Since we apparently knew where these facilities and capabilities were, why hadn’t we already attacked them?  In war, you don’t allow the enemy the first shot.  You kill them before they can attack you.  What’s more, if you’re in a war worth fighting, your goal is total victory which means you don’t stop until the enemy forces have been 100% eliminated.  Again, why had we allowed known military facilities to remain in existence?
 
From a military perspective, we now appear to be fighting a half-measures war instead of going for total victory as we had seemed poised to do a few weeks ago.  I’m very disappointed that we’re in a war we don’t seem to want to pursue to the only worthwhile conclusion.  If we weren’t serious about it, we shouldn’t have gotten into it.
 
 
Note:  As always, we’re discussing only the military aspects, not the political.  Political comments will be deleted so don’t bother.
 
 
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[1]Redstate website, “Iran Attacks Our Ships, and U.S. Makes the Regime Regret It”, Nick Arama, 7-May-2026,
https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2026/05/07/us-hits-iranian-targets-n2202116

Exercise Nonsense

The US participated in an island defense exercise as part of ‘Balikatan 2026’.  The following statement from a USNI News article on the exercise demonstrates why this kind of exercise is worse than useless.
 

At this point in the Littoral Deep Battle plan, an overwhelming torrent of fires ripped apart any notional enemies that made it to the beach.[1]

“Overwhelming torrent of fires” ????
“ripped apart any notional enemies”  ????
 
Who wrote this article … Steven Spielberg?
 
Where was the intelligent, free acting, well equipped enemy force with their own “overwhelming torrent of fires” ripping apart any notional defenders after having pounded the defenses with an overwhelming torrent of missiles, rockets, and drones?  Where was the attacker’s Gen. Van Riper?
 
One might be tempted to say, yeah, this wasn’t a perfect exercise but it was a start and better than nothing, right?  Wrong.  

First, it’s not a “start” on anything.  We should have been practicing assault defense for decades.  We should be well past the “starting” point.  

Second, and worse, we now have a group of officers and men who think this is how reality will be and they’ll have no idea what to do when the perfect, scripted actions they're used to are demolished by the enemy’s vote.  An NBA basketball team wouldn’t practice against a high school team and believe that would somehow prepare them for a championship game.  Why would we practice against a ludicrously simplistic “assault force” and believe for a second that it was in any way realistic or helpful?  All this did was establish and reinforce bad habits in our doctrine and our people.
 
I guess we learned our lesson from Millennium Challenge 2002.  You avoid controversy by making the exercise ridiculously easy.
 
 
 
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[1]USNI News website, “‘Littoral Deep Battle’ - The Army’s Plan to Defeat an Amphibious Invasion in the Indo-Pacific”, Aaron-Matthew Lariiosa, 5-May-2026,
https://news.usni.org/2026/05/05/littoral-deep-battle

Trump’s Battleship – What is it Really?

A reader recently launched a mini-rant about the classification of Trump’s battleship as a battleship, claiming it should be a heavy cruiser, instead.  This led me to reflect on what it really is.  Heavy cruiser?  Light cruiser?  Oversized destroyer?  Arsenal ship?  Something else?
 
As you all know, President Trump has a fondness for hyperbole (turning Canada into the 51^st state, seizing Greenland, this pretend battleship, etc.) which is often just a prelude to subsequent negotiations (he loves making deals!).  Only the left takes the obvious hyperbole as meaning anything.  The wiser and calmer among us recognize it for what it is and get a chuckle out of it.  Thus, the classification of Trump’s battleship as a battleship is strictly for public relations purposes and, perhaps, a bit of a thumbing of the nose at China.
 
So, if it’s not a battleship, what is it?  Acknowledging that we lack enough specifications to draw much in the way of definitive conclusions, let’s go down the list of classifications, just for fun, and see what, if anything fits.
 
Battleship – It’s clearly not a battleship as it lacks armor, survivability, and effective fire support for land forces among other shortcomings.
 
Heavy Cruiser – A heavy cruiser is a mini-battleship with appropriately heavy armor, guns (land attack), and anti-ship weaponry.  Again, this ship is clearly not a heavy cruiser.
 
Light Cruiser – These are compromise ships that try to excel at one aspect of heavier ship’s tasks while retaining some armor and survivability and, most importantly, holding to a cost-conscious construction budget.  They may be specialized as anti-air, anti-surface, escort, or other tasks.  Trump’s battleship could fall somewhere in this category, in some respects, although it is stunningly not budget-friendly and lacks a specialization so it’s not really a light cruiser.
 
Oversize Destroyer – Trump’s ship certainly falls into this category in terms of the lack of armor and survivability but it has way too much in the way of weapons and is insanely expensive for a destroyer, oversize or not.
 
LCS – Trump’s ship checks a lot of the boxes for being an LCS!  It tries to be all things.  It depends on mostly non-existent systems.  It has no clear mission focus.  One could plausibly call it a hugely oversized, astoundingly expensive LCS although, thankfully, no one has yet mentioned interchangeable modules.
 
Arsenal Ship – The arsenal ship is a concept ship that is, essentially, a mobile missile barge with only that one function.  We’re getting close, here.  Trump’s ship is, essentially, a mobile missile barge albeit with large scoops of non-existent, fantasy gold plating (rail gun, laser, etc.) piled on and lots of independent capabilities that an arsenal ship would lack.  It also conflates anti-air and strike missions instead of focusing on just one.  Nevertheless, this is the closest fit as far as classification.
 
That said, as an arsenal ship it is a hideously poor design as evidenced by the cost and multiple fantasy systems.  An arsenal ship should be a minimally functional, cheap barge for carrying missiles for some other platform to control.
 
 
Conclusion
 
The only conclusion is that, like every recent Navy ship program, the “battleship” is just a collection of disjointed technologies, mostly non-existent, cobbled together and slapped with the inspiring label of “battleship”.  It lacks a CONOPS and, certainly, no formal Analysis of Alternatives has been performed. 
 
Given the extremely low probability of it ever actually being built, we should simply view it as an indicator of Trump’s enthusiasm for a strong Navy and hope that enthusiasm eventually gets channeled into more productive and useful assets.
 
As far as this post, take it as a bit of amusement.  Don’t get too worked up over it.

Satellites - Single Point of Failure

One of the worst things you can have in combat is a single point of failure;  a linchpin upon which an entire operation depends.  If it fails, you lose everything.  For example, let’s imagine a ship has several types of sensors and all are operated off electrical power that ultimately passes through a single cable.  That cable would represent a single point of failure.  Sever the cable and all the sensor systems would be rendered inoperative by a single component’s failure.  We have seen examples in industry and the military where supposedly redundant, independent systems have failed because of an unrecognized single point of failure.  In our example, we might be tempted to proudly proclaim that we have set up multiple independent sensor systems.  After all, they’re physically separated.  They use different frequencies.  They each have their own cooling systems.  Those that need motors each have their own.  Completely independent;  nothing in common ...  except for the single power cable that no one thought about and did not recognize as a single point of failure.
 
Our military is currently constructing a single point of failure on a very large scale in the form of satellite communications.  Consider the vast number of systems that all depend on satellite communications:  drones, weapons, command and control, sensors, and on and on.  If we lose satellite communications, we lose … well … a huge chunk of our entire military capability.
 
You might be tempted to argue that satellite communications are not a single point of failure because we have dozens/hundreds/thousands of satellites and no enemy could possibly eliminate all of them.  Setting aside the highly debatable nature of that assertion, think, what do all satellites have in common?  That’s right, a very small number of control/communication stations … approaching a single point of failure.  It doesn’t matter how many satellites you have if they all depend on a very few control stations.
 
Think further, what do all control stations have in common?  An even smaller number of software programs that run them.  If an enemy can hack/virus the software (we’ve seen that it’s almost impossible to prevent hacking of military or commercial networks and programs), it instantly renders all the control stations and their associated satellites useless.
 
Well, none of that could ever happen, you say.  Except that already has and we have at least one public example.
 

A global outage across Elon Musk’s satellite network ​affecting millions of Starlink users had left two dozen unmanned surface vessels bobbing off the California coast, disrupting communications and halting operations for almost an hour.
 
The incident, which involved drones ‌intended to bolster U.S. military options in a conflict with China, was one of several Navy test disruptions linked to SpaceX's Starlink that left operators unable to connect with autonomous boats, according to internal Navy documents reviewed by Reuters and a person familiar with the matter.[1]

Think even further.  What if a key individual (a single point of failure, by definition!) were to shut down or sabotage the entire satellite system, perhaps motivated by bribes/payoffs or coerced by Chinese threats against him or his family?  Couldn’t happen, you laugh?  How about this:
 

Reuters reported last year that [Elon] Musk unexpectedly switched off Starlink access to Ukrainian troops as they sought to retake territory from Russia, denting allies' trust in the billionaire.[1]

There you have a single (non-military!) individual shutting down a satellite system because he disagreed with the military and geopolitical actions.
 
Think further still.  The single point of failure doesn’t have to involve destruction of assets, cyber attacks, or rogue villains.  It could be as simple as routine mechanical/software failure.  Here’s an example.
 

In April 2025, during a series ​of Navy tests in California involving unmanned boats and flying drones, officials reported that Starlink struggled to provide a solid network connection due to the high data usage needed to control multiple systems, according to a Navy safety report of the tests reviewed by Reuters.[1]

Given the complexity of modern systems, sometimes you don’t even know why a system failed.
 

In the weeks leading up to the global Starlink outage in August, another ​series of Navy tests was disrupted by intermittent connection issues with the Starlink network, Navy documents reviewed by Reuters show. ​The causes of the network losses were not immediately clear.[1]

Now let’s close with one of the dumbest statements I’ve heard in a while, courtesy of Mr. Bryan Clark at the Hudson Institute.
 

Despite the setbacks, the upside of Starlink – a cheap and commercially available service – outweighs the risk of a potential outage disrupting future military operations, said Bryan Clark, an autonomous warfare expert at the Hudson Institute. “You ​accept those vulnerabilities because of the benefits you get from the ubiquity it provides,” he said.[1]

In peacetime you might accept the occasional failure because the downside isn’t all that serious.  It’s not life or death … just inconvenience.  In war, it most certainly is life and death and you can’t afford systems with known single points of failure and a known, not insignificant, failure rate to begin with.
 
 
Discussion
 
Given our overwhelming dependence on satellites, do you think the Chinese are going to allow us to continue to use them, unhindered?  Of course not!  They’ll attack them physically, electronically, digitally (software), and via human operator vulnerabilities.  Anyone want to bet that there aren’t Chinese agents embedded in the military or Starlink?  One way or another, I’d be very surprised if we have many operating satellites two weeks after the war starts.
 
We see that satellite communications could be disrupted in a variety of ways:  physical destruction, cyber attacks, software viruses, sabotage, and routine failure, among other methods.  Does it make sense that so much of our military, current and future, has, as its very foundation, satellite communications?  Would any sane individual purposely build a system with that many known, anticipatable vulnerabilities?  And yet we’re doing exactly that.  Worse, we’re increasing our use of, and dependence on, satellites instead of decreasing it.
 
Consider that the military, some years ago, recognized GPS as a significant vulnerability.  All of our navigation and most of our weapons depend on GPS.  GPS was recognized as a single point of failure and the military, to their slow and belated credit, has set about mitigating that dependence.  We’re now designing systems that use alternates to GPS.  We knew we couldn’t accept a single point of failure, like GPS, and yet we’re intentionally and enthusiastically embracing satellites as a single point of failure.  That’s baffling.
 
 
 
 
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[1]Reuters website, “Exclusive: Starlink outage hit drone tests, exposing Pentagon’s growing reliance on SpaceX”, David Jeans, 16-Apr-2026,
https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/starlink-outage-hit-drone-tests-exposing-pentagons-growing-reliance-spacex-2026-04-16/