When we discussed the Tarawa early retirements, I stated that additional amphibious ship classes would begin to be early retired in the near future. Well, here’s a quote from the 2013 USMC Seabasing Required Capabilities Annual Report,
“… LSD 41/46 vessels will begin to be decommissioned beginning in FY 15 13/19 years ahead of their service life allowance.”
This is absolutely disgusting. Congress should flat out stop funding naval construction of all types until the Navy can show that they can operate and maintain the ships they have at least through their service lives. Rewarding the Navy with new ships because they failed to maintain their existing ones is fundamentally wrong and is a gross violation of the trust of the American taxpayer.
This was announced a while back. It seems that these two hulls of the 8 LSD-41 class have just been SLEP'd at serious expense to the US taxpayers, as the other hulls of that class have. They are thus at 21st-century levels of relative automation, all-electric systems (no steam aboard), have decent steel, and are greedily looked at by Malaysia.
ReplyDeleteAnybody interested in ship-to-shore capability should be alarmed at losing 25% of the sole such long well-deck class in any navy. It would take 6 LPD-17s to recover the well-deck carrying-capacity of LSD-41 and LSD-46.
Is there any money for another 6x LPD-17 ?
Each LSD-41 type appears to cost around $20million to operate per year.
Where are the claimed savings ?
The LSD-41 class has actually seen the most intense duty-cycle/most instances of deployment, including solo, such as to West African waters.
They appear to remain one of the Navy's most cost-effective amphibious/multi-purpose vessels available between heavy-duty flight-deck and massive well-deck capability.
And they are all paid for.
Had Pres. Carter had his way, we'd have 24 of that class. Instead, due to Pres. Reagan's shift of preferences, there is now one more Carrier...
What in the devil is wrong with the Navy leadership? Have these people lost all rationality? This is absolutely insane. But then again, this is the same crowd that gave us the Little Crappy Ship and SINKEX'ed the Sprucans after retiring them early so they couldn't be given a NTU type refit, because that might have cut into the new construction of DDG-51's.
ReplyDeleteSo what, pray tell, is going to replace these prematurely retired LSD's? LCS's or JHSV's? So far as I can tell, there are no new LSD's planned for construction anytime in the near future. Why are we retired perfectly good ships at a time when we are suffering a serious shortfall of amphibs. This is starting to sound more like sabotage than stupidity.
It's pretty clear we need new leadership in the Navy. Firing Ray Mabus, who has to be the worst SECNAV in the history of the fleet and Admiral Greenert, who has to be worst CNO ever, would be a good start. Then I would put Admiral Tom Copeman in as CNO, since he seems to be one of few admirals with his head on straight and one of the few with any real integrity. Sadly, that will probably disqualify him for his fourth star, much less the CNO slot.
Good thing to have USAMC-Boss General Amos !
ReplyDeleteTwo days ago at WEST 2014, he starts an intriguing monologue at 0:12:25:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHWy1LIYyjQ
Notice emphasis on Connectors and ARG-MU placement at 70-80nm from shore.
And another mention later...