Initial Ticonderoga Retirement

I get tired of hearing people call for ship designs with 40-50 year service lives and designed in upgradability.  Aside from being an extremely questionable concept, the reality is that the Navy almost always retires perfectly good ships far earlier than their service life limit calls for.  The only exception is carriers and that, only to an extent. 

 

For example, the Ticonderoga class cruisers were designed with a 35 year service life and yet the first five ships of the class were retired barely halfway through their designed lifespan.  The actual service lives are shown in the table below.

 

 

 

Ship	Years at Retirement
CG-47, Ticonderoga	21
CG-48, Yorktown	20
CG-49, Vincennes	20
CG-50, Valley Forge	18
CG-51, Gates	18

 

 

Why were these ships retired?  The Navy has offered numerous explanations with most centering around the ineffectiveness of the twin arm missile launchers and the prohibitive cost to upgrade the ships to VLS.  We’ve already demonstrated the fallacy of the claim that arm launchers are substantially inferior … they’re not (see, “VLS versus Arm Launchers”)!  They’re just as good and, in some circumstances, better than VLS!

 

At the very least, the twin arm launcher Ticonderogas were, and still are, the equal or superior to any other ship in the world.  Does it make sense to have thrown them away?  Even if one believes that VLS is superior, the difference in performance is minimal and nowhere near enough to justify early retirement of five world class ships.

USS Ticonderoga

 

For the sake of further discussion, let’s accept the Navy explanation at face value.  This perfectly illustrates the folly and the degree of self-deception in designing a ship to have a long service life and undergo modernization – it just doesn’t happen!  When the time comes to modernize, the Navy always claims that the ship under consideration is too expensive and obsolete to modernize.  This was true for the Spruance, the Los Angeles, the Perry, the Tarawa, the Ticonceroga, and other classes.  If we know, with near 100% certainty that the ship won’t be upgraded and modernized and will, in fact, be retired early, why do people persist in trying to argue for long design service lives?  Clearly, the rationale - that modernization will occur - is false.

 

ComNavOps has argued for building ships with a 20 year life span.  In this example, two of the five ships didn’t even make it that far!  I guess I need to reduce my goal!

 

Had the Ticonderoga class been designed for a 20 year life, maintenance costs would have been far cheaper since maintenance costs go up with time.  In addition, the mythical modernization would have actually occurred because brand new ships would have been built at the 20 year mark.  New ships … cheaper to operate … it’s a Navy dream come true!

 

Let’s stop deluding ourselves and acknowledge that designing long service lives is pointless, useless, more expensive, and results in a fleet of older, less capable ships.  It is obvious that the Navy has no interest in properly maintaining ships to achieve their full service life and even less interest in performing mid-life modernizations.  The Navy attempted to retire the entire remaining Ticonderoga class early and proposed foregoing the mid-life RCOH for a couple of carriers.  In each case, Congress has slapped the Navy down and yet the Navy keeps trying to early retire its ships.  The Navy uses long service lives as a ‘bait and switch’ tactic to obtain funding from Congress. 

 

Having acknowledged that (admitting a problem is half the battle!), we can then begin a rational force structure design process based on 20-year ship lives and continual, timely modernization (new ships).  The result will be a younger fleet with lower construction costs and significantly lower maintenance and operating costs, as well as a more robust shipbuilding industry thanks to building twice as many ships.