In a recent post, a reader, referencing the current ‘3 ships
to keep one deployed (3:1)’ model, asked this,
My initial reaction was slight irritation and disbelief that after all the time I’ve spent advocating ending deployments and bringing the fleet home, people still didn’t understand the concept. A few more seconds thought and I realized that the question was perfectly apropos because I’d failed to adequately explain the concept. Yes, I’d talked endlessly about bringing the fleet home and some of the gross benefits that would derive from that (improved readiness, enhanced training, better maintenance, etc.) but I’d never bothered to explain exactly how all these benefits would come about. What procedures would change to allow this? What circumstances would change? How, exactly, would these benefits occur?
I’d like to apologize to that reader and rectify my
oversight, now, and explain how and why this would work.
Circumstances
Let’s look, first, at the change in circumstances that would
result from a switch to home basing the fleet.
Miles – The most obvious change in circumstance would
be that the ships wouldn’t deploy.
They’d be home based. Okay, so
how does this help? Well, the home
basing means that the ships wouldn’t be racking up endless miles which is
another way of saying wear and tear. A
ship at home simply doesn’t wear out as fast as one on a 6-12 month deployment.
Support – Being home based means that every ship is
within arm’s length of ready maintenance support. That support takes the form of a ready supply
of parts, repair technicians, machine shops, skilled trades, cranes, etc. There would be no more delayed/deferred
maintenance that piles up during an extended, many-month deployment.
It’s embarrassing for the Navy to even have to say this but
the support would include corrosion control so that our ships don’t look like rusted
out garbage scows.
Training – Did you know that a deploying group loses
capability and readiness as the cruise goes on?
That’s because they don’t do what they’re trained to do while on a
cruise. They aren’t attacking or
defending. Instead, they’re just showing
the flag and dozens of other utterly useless tasks. A deployed group is less combat
capable when they return from deployment than when they started. How backward and unproductive – indeed,
counterproductive! – is that! A group
that goes out should come back more combat capable than when they
began. After all, they were at sea and
sea time should be all about high intensity, realistic training, not scut work
(to borrow a medical term for pointless tasks).
The home base circumstance eliminates deployments and the
associated, unavoidable degradation of readiness and, instead, allows
continuous training.
Can we alter or change the maintenance, training, and deployable cycle we have into something better? Obviously with the shipyard logjam, we couldn't have all ships "up" at once, but could we somehow tinker, and maybe flip that to 2/3 ready, or more?[1]
My initial reaction was slight irritation and disbelief that after all the time I’ve spent advocating ending deployments and bringing the fleet home, people still didn’t understand the concept. A few more seconds thought and I realized that the question was perfectly apropos because I’d failed to adequately explain the concept. Yes, I’d talked endlessly about bringing the fleet home and some of the gross benefits that would derive from that (improved readiness, enhanced training, better maintenance, etc.) but I’d never bothered to explain exactly how all these benefits would come about. What procedures would change to allow this? What circumstances would change? How, exactly, would these benefits occur?
- Training
- Maintaining
- A week spent training for an upcoming exercise and/or general training.
- A week at sea in an exercise which includes 24 hour, intensive training leaving the crew exhausted each night and with no desire or energy to even think about video games, lounges, haircuts, weight lifting, movies, or any other crew comfort activity.
- A week spent debriefing and re-training the just completed exercise.
- A week spent performing preventive/routine maintenance.
- An occasional day sprinkled in addressing any emergent, unscheduled maintenance need.
- Address maintenance issues instantly, as they arise. No deferred maintenance.
- Constant training.
- Regular, short episodes of sea time conducting realistic exercises. The short time frames eliminate the need for all but the most basic and necessary crew comforts. Toilets? – squat over the stern! Berthing? – hang a hammock somewhere!
- Constant training instead of just occasional pre-deployment training every year or so
- Constant maintenance instead of delayed/deferred maintenance at the end of a deployment
- 93% fleet readiness instead of 17% readiness
- No forward exposure offering an enemy a free ‘Pearl Harbor’ opportunity
- Maximum flexibility; if all the ships are ready and available, our mission options are unlimited
https://navy-matters.blogspot.com/2024/08/lincoln-escorts.html?showComment=1724188632892#c8797956642859824661
The best argument in support of this idea is our current world situation. People say a major war may occur in the Middle East soon and US Navy ships have been in combat near Yemen. After a year's notice, the best our Navy can do is to deploy two carrier groups to the region, and one was borrowed from the Pacific and both only have three escorts!
ReplyDeleteI was looking around last week and was surprised that we have two cruisers and eight destroyers in Hawaii. Why? That is a very high cost duty station and how do these train with carriers?
"Military Sealift Command has drafted a plan to remove the crews from 17 Navy support ships due to a lack of qualified mariners to operate the vessels across the Navy, USNI News learned."
DeleteThe Navy has a secret plan to implement CONOPs
home base plan, stage 1 retire the support ships.
we should get rid of the ship's boats and arms lockers. Yes, ships have always had small boats and arms lockers for literally hundreds of years, but they're unnecessary in this day and age. When was the last time marines fired shots from the ship they were based on?
ReplyDeleteThere are still many uses for ship's boats and small arms. Ships do still anchor offshore and need boats to shuttle to shore. Boats are used for personnel transfer. Boats can be used to survey hull condition and assist with maintenance. Boats are used for boarding operations. And so on.
DeleteIn this day of terrorists, small arms are mandatory. Every time a ship is in port, they must mount their own security. And so on.
What a turnaround from the time you said ships should eliminate VBSS assets - i.e. the boat and the arms locker - because it adds cost for a marginal function. lol
Delete"the time you said ships should eliminate VBSS assets"
Delete??? You appear to be mis-remembering or misinterpreting something. I have no objection to VBSS ops. In fact, I can't recall ever doing a post on VBSS and very few comments, if any. The only objection I have to VBSS is when they're performed using Burke Aegis ships because that's an utter waste of resources and immense overkill. VBSS should be performed by patrol boats (the Cyclones come to mind) unless there's reason to believe the vessel being boarded constitutes a high level threat which would be vanishingly rare.
So, we switch to this deployment model and we've just achieved much better than a 600 ship navy by applying the math of the results of this change. Current model, 17% of ships are available means 102 available ships out of 600 using today's deployment model. But, this revised model, using 296 ships, at 93% available is 276 ships. That would compare to a 1,600 ship navy if we continue behaving as we do now....
ReplyDeleteFascinating numbers, right?
Delete"So, we switch to this deployment model and we've just achieved much better than a 600 ship navy by applying the math of the results of this change. Current model, 17% of ships are available means 102 available ships out of 600 using today's deployment model. But, this revised model, using 296 ships, at 93% available is 276 ships."
DeleteInteresting, but the factor not considered in that analysis is that the increase in number of ships would reduce the deployment time required for each ship. Suppose we had 600 ships and averaged 50 ships deployed at a time and a maximum of 6 months per deployment. That would be a maximum of 600 ship-months (50 x 12) deployed per year, or an average of 1 month per ship--of course, some ships would be deployed more months and some ships would be deployed fewer. If we assume that 93% readiness could be attained by spending 12 months in home port, then it seems reasonable that 85% could be attained by spending 11 months in port. That would mean 510 ships available at any time. The USN would still be the dominant seapower worldwide, and we would rely on allies to pick up any slack.
"6 months per deployment."
DeleteJust can't let go of that paradigm!
"Just can't let go of that paradigm!"
DeleteNo, because I don't want to turn the seas over to PLAN. While I don't know absolutely that will happen, I also don't know what the last 80 years would have looked like without the USN protecting the world's SLOCs. And as it was, was pretty good.
I do recognize the need to modify the paradigm, and have said so for years. Two things are very different from 1945: One, the allies have recovered from the devastation of WWII, and are therefore much better prepared to shoulder more of the burden. Two, the USA economy is not the dominant worldwide economic force that it was in 1945. Therefore the paradigm needs adjusting. Therefore I have for some time proposed two adjustments to the paradigm. One, depend on allies for more help in their respective regions. Two, grow the Navy back to the size that we supported in the 1980s, at the same projected cost as the USN's current plan, by building fewer of the expensive all-purpose ships that the USA prefers, and filing out the numbers with cheaper single-purpose or dual-purpose ships. As far as crewing, convert about 20,000-30,000 current shore admin/overhead positions to shipboard positions.
In 1992 Ross Perot said that in the post-Cold-War era, economic power will be more important than military power. China took that to heart, and while we have spent 20 years wasting lives and limbs of our 20-somethings plinking goat herders in pickup trucks trying to impose militarily western ways on people who don't want western ways, they have been building an economic empire across South Asia and Africa, now extending to Latin America and even Europe. That drives a very different paradigm from the Cold War. The enemy is China, not Russia, and the means must be economic as well a military. Hence my proposed approach. Build the world's dominant economy in industry/manufacturing (including shipbuilding), energy, and agriculture, and build the world's most powerful military (at least as strong as the next two combined) and don't waste any of it on wars that we are not fighting to win.
"I don't want to turn the seas over to PLAN."
DeleteWhat do you think China would do that they aren't already?
Once upon a time, some early man must have said, I don't know that there's anything wrong with living in a house but caves have worked well for us for a thousand years so I don't want to change.
"And as it was, was pretty good."
And 'pretty good' came with a huge opportunity cost. Consider the untold billions we've spent doing unnecessary deployments (by your own admission) both at sea and on land (Europe, mainly). With that kind of money available, try to imagine the weapons, maintenance, training, etc. we could have done and how much larger, stronger, and more ready the armed forces could be today. By hanging too tightly onto the past, well past the time for change, we've crippled ourselves today and rendered the military, in general, and the Navy, in particular, hollow, ill-trained, and not combat-ready.
I'm a major proponent of embracing the lessons of the past but, at some point, you have to let go of your death grip on the past and embrace the future.
How much better could we be today? Your paradigm has an enormous opportunity cost that has been hurting us for decades, now, and yet you want to continue it. You've (grudgingly!) acknowledged the need for some changes. Why not go all the way and embrace a clearly better system?
Arguably we could just surrender control of the world's seas to China. The US economy is, by and by, self sufficient (with some pains) and we could survive closed off from the world. This would then force the Chinese to come to our backyard to fight, which advantages us, because now we're the ones fighting in our backyard.
DeleteIt does seem very strange, however, that the US Air Force is the only airforce in the entire world that does not put effort into maritime strike, having chosen to delegate that role to it's natural rival, the US Navy.
"Arguably we could just surrender control of the world's seas to China"
DeleteVERY arguably.
"The US economy is, by and by, self sufficient (with some pains)"
Have you forgotten what happened with COVID? The world's shipping didn't quit halt but it certainly slowed significantly and the US economy was devastated. Shortages were widespread and prices skyrocketed. People attempted to hoard goods, initially, and then products were simply unavailable. Baby food, pet food, medicines, automobiles ... almost everything was in very short supply.
"force the Chinese to come to our backyard to fight"
You can't win a war fighting in your own backyard. You win by fighting in the enemy's backyard. Bringing China into our backyard exposes our mainland industries, resources, shipping, transportation, and military to attack and those are the targets you want to strike to win a war. Giving China the opportunity to strike our centers of gravity while theirs remain unreachable is a losing strategy by definition.
"Just can't let go of that paradigm!"
DeleteI have the impression that you think that if we end deployments we would forfeit the right or ability to ever again influence events at sea. Is this what you're afraid of?
Nothing about the home basing, no-deployment model prohibits us from executing specific missions to protect the seas. For example, if pirates become a problem, there is nothing wrong with sending a force to ELIMINATE the pirates at their source rather than aimlessly patrolling an area that pirates might appear in.
That's the difference between a mission and a deployment. The former identifies a threat and ELIMINATES it at the source whereas the latter aimlessly sails around and hopes someone is intimidated into stopping their bad behavior. As we've seen, that's a fantasy.
For example, if China begins routinely trespassing into another country's territorial waters and that country requests our help, we can execute a mission to FORCIBLY defend that country's waters. Again, that's a specific mission as opposed to an endless deployment where we hope being in the general area will miraculously change China's behavior.
We don't lose our ability to influence events at sea if we drop deployments. In fact, we'd be in a better position to influence events because we'd have a navy that was always combat ready and available to surge. You'll recall the recent attempt to deploy a Marine force and the Navy didn't have any amphibs available? Ironically, the end result of the deployment model is a navy that can't deploy when needed! We've got carriers forced to do back-to-back deployments and then they come back and are out of action for years because of the neglected and deferred maintenance.
And you want to maintain this system?
"I have the impression that you think that if we end deployments we would forfeit the right or ability to ever again influence events at sea. Is this what you're afraid of?"
DeleteNo, that is incorrect. What we would lose is some ability to to influence events on a real-time day-to-day basis. To use your example, we could send a force to forcibly put a syop to pirate activities. But that force would have to transit from its home base before it could take any action, and a lot of damage could be done in that time.
"That's the difference between a mission and a deployment. The former identifies a threat and ELIMINATES it at the source whereas the latter aimlessly sails around and hopes someone is intimidated into stopping their bad behavior."
I have the impression that you think I am calling for more of the sail-around-but-do-nothing that the USN has favored for years. Nothing could be further from the truth. If Iranian boats are harassing merchant ships in the Straits of Hormuz, don't just watch, sink them. If China is infringing on the territorial waters of its neighbors, our forces deployed to WestPac forcibly defend those territorial waters.
I think we both see excessive deployments as a problem that needs to be addressed, and we both agree that the USN's current wander around aimlessly and do nothing approach to deployments is worse that useless.
"And you want to maintain this system?"
Absolutely not.
"But that force would have to transit from its home base before it could take any action, and a lot of damage could be done in that time."
DeletePirates can't do much damage in the amount of time it would take to make a transit. What could they do? Seize an odd ship out of the thousands of ships on the seas? That's no damage in the grand scheme of things and the flip side is we would have saved billions of dollars in maintaining a far flung system of deployed ships just to stop an occasional skiff with a few pirates. The other benefit would be that once we arrived, we'd end the problem PERMANENTLY. If we're not willing to do that then it's not a mission worth executing.
You don't deal with pirates by establishing a never-ending deployment schedule costing billions of dollars over the decades; you deal with pirates by PERMANENTLY ending them in a single action and then returning to home base.
Try as you might, there's just no way to defend deployments! They're a flawed concept.
"VERY arguably."
DeleteI mean, think about it logically. We remove our presence from securing maritime SLOCs, China steps in to take over that security burden (and starts running up the same maintennance bills we have)... we get to flip the tables on them.
"You can't win a war fighting in your own backyard. You win by fighting in the enemy's backyard. Bringing China into our backyard exposes our mainland industries, resources, shipping, transportation, and military to attack and those are the targets you want to strike to win a war. Giving China the opportunity to strike our centers of gravity while theirs remain unreachable is a losing strategy by definition."
And yet the chinese warplans, as you've noted, rely on us fighting in their backyard (which is what Taiwan is) so that they can bring their full strength to bear on us.
Consider: if we fight in their backyard, we've got a couple of of our carrier groups trying to fight thousands of land-based tactical aircraft, and hundreds of small patrol boats and corvettes in addition to their frigate and destroyer fleet.
Fighting in our backyard, they're stuck with whatever STOBAR aircraft they can launch off their carriers, and with only their frigates and destroyers as ships which have the range and seakeeping to make it to American waters. And unlike China, our industry isn't concentrated on a specific section of the coast, it's spread up and down the western and eastern seaboards and we still have military industry deeper within the nation.
"That's no damage in the grand scheme of things and the flip side is we would have saved billions of dollars in maintaining a far flung system of deployed ships just to stop an occasional skiff with a few pirates."
I feel people are kinda forgetting that the USN doesn't just chase down pirates, it's used as an instrument of American foreign policy. I'm reminded of CNO Burke ordering a carrier group to the Suez to get the British, French and the Egpytians to all calm down and back off during the Suez Crisis. An American carrier group is a very visible marker to belligerents that Uncle Sam is watching and you'd better calm the fuck down. There is a difference in calculus between knowing that if you start shit, an American carrier is arriving within days, versus knowing the carrier is arriving 2 weeks from now. 2 weeks is enough time for hostilities between Greece and Turkey to escalate into a shooting war. The Chinese are still shocked at how fast we surged carriers into the Taiwan Strait during the Taiwan Missile Crisis, which is what really kicked their asses in gear to get their own carriers.
Now of course the argument is that you can't really prove that there was benefit to that carrier group calming things down because you can't prove hostilities didn't break out becasue of the threat of American force. That's a valid and legitimate point. Consider an analogy tho: our cops, unlike cops in Britain, are armed. We train our cops to be able to deescalate potentially violent situations without the use of force. Does that mean that the weapons they carry are pointless?
DeleteI think we agree on two points:
1. The current deployment schedule is wearing out our ships and our sailors, and reducing our readiness.
2. The current practice of milling about and doing nothing to eliminate problems is stupid and counterproductive.
"we get to flip the tables on them"
DeleteYou're ignoring the purpose of war. It's to win an ultimate victory. By definition, you can't do that in your own backyard. You do that by going into the enemy's backyard and destroying them, totally and completely. What you've described is the scenario and condition to - maybe - win a defensive battle, not a war. You win wars in the enemy's territory, not your own.
"we've got a couple of of our carrier groups trying to fight thousands of land-based tactical aircraft"
All I can say is that you need to do some serious study of the art of war.
"An American carrier group is a very visible marker to belligerents that Uncle Sam is watching"
This applies ONLY if the enemy believes you'd use that force. Does anyone in the world, today, believe we'd use our force in such a manner? We didn't when Iran seized our vessels. We didn't when China seized our aircraft and UUV. We didn't when NKorea lobbed missiles all over the surrounding seas. We didn't when Russia seized Crimea and invaded Ukraine. We didn't when China repeatedly violated Vietnam and Philippine waters. We didn't when China built illegal artificial islands. You need to study current events.
"Does that mean that the weapons they carry are pointless?"
And yet not only does crime continue, it's increasing. So much for the deterrent effect.
"I think we agree on two points:"
DeleteThe key is in our ideal solutions. My ideal solution is to totally eliminate deployments. Your ideal solution (not your partial solution) is to continue deployments (maybe increase?) with a larger fleet and with more and larger ships per deployment. We could not be more opposite!
Elephant in the room moment folks: if we're not going to actually use force, then all this discussion of deployments is academic.
DeleteCNO has accidentally hit the nail on the head.
"accidentally"
Delete??? I've preached this throughout the blog.
"Elephant in the room moment folks ... CNO has accidentally hit the nail on the head."
Delete??? I've preached this throughout the blog. You need to review the archives.
Quite frankly this focus on navies is misleading and parochial.
DeleteWe have the largest nuclear arsenal in the world. We can absolutely win a nuclear exchange with China. Forget fleets and navies, we should just go open up with our ICBMs.
Neither we or China have an actual no first use doctrine. We BEHAVE as if we do, because that's good for optics, but we can absolutely shoot first. China CLAIMS they reject first use, but China lies all the tine.
Presence without purpose is worthless.
Delete"Presence without purpose is worthless."
DeleteYou're slowly coming around!
Now, the next step is to define a WORTHWHILE purpose. The Navy (and you!) would say that sailing around on a deployment with no specific task/mission IS a purpose. Of course, it's not. It's just aimless cruising on a cruise ship.
So, that's the next step: to get you to understand what is a worthwhile purpose and what isn't. Taskless deployments 'isn't'.
Yes, you are consistently calling for untasked, generic deployments. Here's your quote:
"My deployment concept would have about 50 ships deployed at a time"
"All I can say is that you need to do some serious study of the art of war."
DeleteAs you've pointed out on this blog numerous times, we have to plan as if we're going it alone, because we can't be sure that our allies will support a war with China. This means our bases in Korea and Japan, and the fighters and bombers there are off the table. Even if we could use PACAF fighters, as you pointed out earlier this year (https://navy-matters.blogspot.com/2024/06/do-we-need-aerial-tankers.html) , fighters have limited endurance, measured in hours, because of pilot fatigue. The Air Force has been regularly running 10 hour to 20 hour bomber missiones, but the bomber fleet is limited, and even the new B-21 will only be procured in about 100 airframes.
In terms of land based aviation, China has the advantage because they're fighting in their own backyard: they can maintain sensor density for their ASBM killchains with their MPA and AEW aircraft, they have large numbers of fighters and bombers to act as missile carrying platforms, and as we've seen from their tests, they're staging their ASBMs in the desert, outside of attack range of carrier air wings.
We could try shift fighter squadrons to Taiwan, sure, but they'll be just as supressed as the Taiwanese air force would be (although that cuts both ways against China, since if we deploy our own Patriots to Taiwan, we can also attempt to suppress their air). Our only source of tactical air is going to be whatever carrier groups we can muster. Yes, we can certainly plan to send the entire fleet there, but look at how bad seamanship and readiness is throughout the fleet. We'll be lucky if we can get even three full strike groups into the AO.
"China has the advantage because they're fighting in their own backyard"
DeleteYou seem to have no idea how a war would be conducted. You seem to think we're going to sail into the South China Sea, anchor our carriers, and trade strikes with China until one side or the other surrenders. Nothing could be further from reality. You really need to study war operations and thoroughly reviewing this blog would be a good start.
Are we or are we not fighting a war to defend and relieve Taiwan? Within the Taiwan Strait, the balance of forces favors the Chinese.
Delete"Within the Taiwan Strait, the balance of forces favors the Chinese."
DeleteWhich is why we would not fight there except from a large stand off distance. Elementary combat theory. You don't find the enemy's strongest point and then sail straight into it. You do the opposite. You really need to study the art of war.
Please explain how does one break a blockade from a large standoff distance, when our existing arsenal of long range standoff weapons are useless because we do not have long range standoff sensors to cue them.
Delete"we do not have long range standoff sensors"
DeleteI'm going to offer you the courtesy of an answer and then I'm going to cut this off because you're clearly looking for an argument rather than a discussion. See the Comment Policy page.
In the case of combat abound Taiwan, we have the entire country of Taiwan to act as a sensor source. Land based radar, IR, electro-optical, etc. sensors will provide more than enough targeting. Heck, a simple man with a telescope will suffice for much targeting!
We also have SOSUS-like arrays scattered around the E/S China Seas.
Aircraft from Japan and Taiwan can provide targeting.
Surviving satellites can provide targeting.
Stealth B-2/21 bombers can provide targeting.
F-35/22s can provide targeting.
All of this is made easier by the fact that China will be constrained to fairly specific locations. An invasion fleet is impossible to hide. Given the known locations, we can even blind fire into the area with good confidence that the missile's onboard sensors can find their own targets once reaching the known general target area.
All of this is just basic operations, tactics, and technology. You need to come up to speed on this before you comment again.
As I said, I'm offering this as a courtesy and this should conclude this discussion.
My father fought in The War and almost never discussed being in action but occasionally reflected on lessons learnt. One example involved tank crews. The British habit was that crews looked after all their own minor and routine maintenance; the American habit was to hand the tank over to specialist maintenance men.
ReplyDeleteI asked why. He thought it partly a matter of incentives - a crew was unlikely to be slipshod in the maintenance of its own tank.
"My father fought in The War and almost never discussed being in action"
DeleteThat's a pretty common phenomenon from what I've observed. My father served aboard an attack transport in several major amphibious assaults. He loved to talk about his leaves and occasional land assignments and the people and adventures he had in Australia but he never talked about the assaults themselves.
All in for your bringing home the fleet. What you describe is a lot like it used to be when I served (early 70s to early 80s). Depending on which coast you were on, you would spend a year in home port, six months working up for deployment, and six months deployed ( Med cruise or Westpac). Deployment to the Med. meant sea time a few weeks a month cruising between ports of call, and the rest of the time tied up to the tender doing maintenance. Pacific cruises early on meant a trip to Tonkin gun line for a few weeks at a time and back to Subic for maintenance work. After the war it pretty much was like a Med cruise, with Subic and Japan being the main maintenance points. After a cruise you would be back stateside and the next year would be pretty much devoted to ship maintenance (yard if need be) and training classes ashore. As an engineer we always had countless damage control, fire fighting, various engineering repair and machine courses. Every month or two we would go out to sea for a couple of days to run drills and then back to port. Six months before another deployment you would go out to sea every other week for various certification drills and training of new crew. For us it meant OPPE certification, (Operational Propulsion Plant Exam). really gruelling stuff involving damage control and engineering casualty control drills. The last month before deployment usually was meant for stocking up supplies and parts, taking leaves. All ships built back then always had a small machine shop with a couple of machinist as well. We did 80 percent of our own repairs on board. They used to have 3M system then ( Maintenance Material Management) where every one was assigned daily, weekly, monthly and semi annual maintenance tasks. Dont know if the Navy still uses this or not. Looking at the condition of the ships I would say not.
ReplyDeleteMy active duty time was in the 1970s and in my four years we made 5 deployments. I think there was a clear consensus that we came back from 4 of the 5 in better material and training readiness than when we had left, and that would have been the case for the fifth as well, except that coming back across the North Atlantic in December and following OTSR, we ran into a fluke storm that did significant topside damage. But those were not pleasure cruises, they were working deployments, with at least one significant multi-ship exercise during each of them, and continuous shipboard maintenance and training. That seems to be somewhat different today.
DeleteOff topic but of interest. The Navy met its recruiting goal this year but...
ReplyDelete"One of the key recruiting changes was the Navy's decision in December 2022 to greatly expand its pool of applicants by wooing young adults with very low test scores, then bring in recruits who don’t have high school diplomas or a GED — both rare steps that the other services greatly limit or avoid.
Cheeseman said that roughly 17% of its recruits this year are so-called category 4 — the lowest end of the test scale. That percentage is much higher than the military norm."
https://www.yahoo.com/news/navy-recruiting-rebounds-miss-target-142904987.html
Press gangs are coming!
DeleteAdmiralObvious
DeleteI'm all in favor of press gangs...they can start with the kids of every admiral in the fleet.
DeleteIn all seriousness though, the challenges of recruiting and especially retention can also be met better with homeporting.
Potential recruits/re-enlistees can see they will not be upending potential families or spending endless months at sea. Those are among the biggest complaints, especially with regards to retention.
There is a political upside as well that I don't think the politicians are getting. Congress is always opposed to base closings, well now we would see naval base expansions instead.
Which also leads to better recruitment as potential recruits are more likely to run into naval personnel when there are even more working at the bases.
Of course one problem there is the cost of housing in California and Hawaii which will benefit the most from base expansion.
Homeporting is also a good opportunity to expand the naval reserves into a proper service option with the fleet right here for training. They can move into more actual at-sea jobs instead of what can often be mediocre and unneeded support roles. And the support roles they do support can more directly help the fleet as once again, everything is happening here.
Finally we always talk about cost. Homefleeting means more jobs here at the expanded bases, which means the money stays here, not overseas with the successors of Fat Leonard. Granted, this is a two edged sword as things done stateside are more expensive than most overseas ports. But with both parties starting to talk about keeping jobs here, this would actually be an opportune time politically to actually push this idea.
"one problem there is the cost of housing in California and Hawaii"
DeleteOffer housing subsidies (or free housing) as a strategic defense cost and as a military service benefit. The cost would be absolutely negligible relative to the defense budget.
"The short time frames eliminate the need for all but the most basic and necessary crew comforts. Toilets? – squat over the stern!"
ReplyDeleteI really would like to see that being done on USN aircraft carriers, or submarines.
Sounds good to me!
DeleteAircraft Carriers--Who doesn't like a nice ocean breeze on their bottom and the sound of an an F-18 launching should definitely hit the "brown note" for the constipated.
Submarines--Open the hatch and hey, that is one high pressure bidet!
Minesweepers--can drop a deuce on the Pentagon lawn since they've been dropping a deuce on minesweeping for decades.
One stupidity is the basing for four and soon five Navy destroyers at Rota, Spain. First it costs the Navy much more for PCS moves and base support. Less money is spent in the USA and more in Spain, which is important as the fleet shrinks. These destroyers can't really "work up" with carriers. They probably have to transit to our east coast for several weeks for any major upgrades or repairs.
ReplyDeleteThe excuse is they are closer to the eastern Med. Yes, if the ship is ready to deploy it saves maybe one week compared to our east coast. Its a nice base and a nice area, but no need to keep ships and their families homeported there.
The Rota destroyers are not 'based' there, they are mission assigned for ballistic missile defense in conjunction with Aegis Ashore. From a USNI News website article:
Delete"The original four destroyers were sent to Rota starting in 2014 as part of the Obama administration’s European Phased Adaptive Approach to ballistic missile defense.
Working in conjunction with two land-based Aegis Ashore BMS sites, the destroyers were set to protect Europe from a rogue ballistic missile fired at the continent."
One can agree or disagree with the mission but this not another Japan, generic, forward basing. They are there for a specific purpose rather than generically supporting the Med.
Personally, I don't see the need but there is a difference ... in theory.
That's how they spin it, but they are still homeported there for a decade now. And the excuse is a fraud since their limited missile range from the eastern Med means they would be lucky to hit any missile fired from Iran to Europe, not to mention Iran has no reason to attack Europe and no missiles with the range to hit central Europe.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.g2mil.com/NMD_Fraud.htm
This relates to my earlier comments about the limits of the MK-41 launcher. If the Navy really wants to play regional missile defense and hit longer range surface targets, it needs bigger missile launchers.
"limited missile range from the eastern Med"
DeleteAre you sure they are deployed in the Eastern Med? Somehow I had the impression they were in the Black Sea for the missile defense mission? That would make sense given the trajectory of a missile from Iran to most of Europe.
Turkey has closed warship transit to the Black Sea , under the Montreux Convention because of the Russian-Ukranian war. No US warships are in the Black Sea.
Delete"Are you sure they are deployed in the Eastern Med?"
DeleteThe articles I've read all indicate that the Navy has established ballistic missile defense 'stations' for the ships in the eastern Med. That's as specific as I've been able to find. I've seen several reports and articles describing various individual Rota ship deployments to the eastern Med. None have ever mentioned the Black Sea.
Given the severe restrictions on Black Sea passage and the 21 day limit, I'd be surprised if we attempted to do that as a BMD station.
I have felt for some time that the USN should not homeport any ships off USA soil. My deployment concept would have about 50 ships deployed at a time, halfway between the USN's current 100 ships deployed and ComNavOps's no deployments. We have beaten that topic to death on other threads, and don't want to get into that again, but am commenting only for background. If no ships were forward based, we would need some supporting activities for those that are deployed. I would propose putting a tender at Guam to serve WestPac, a tender at Diego Garcia to support the Indian Ocean, and a tender somewhere in Europe to support ships deployed there. Rota would be a possibility to support ops in the Med and I wonder about a return to Holy Loch to support ASW ops against the Russians in the GIUK gap. I would pull back from the Persian/Arabian Gulf and Japan because of proximity to foreign missile attacks.
DeleteGuam (and Pearl) would be possible targets for Chinese missiles, and Diego Garcia might at some point. I do not think the LPD-17s are viable amphib platforms--too expensive to risk close enough in to do any good. HII has proposed an ABM/BMD ship for the same hull. I would convert about 12 of those, park 2 off Guam, 1 off Pearl, 1 off Diego Garcia depending on what threat materializes there, and 1 off Rota and/or Holy Loch.
To divert a bit, I also think the LHAs/LHDs are pretty worthless as amphibs for the same reason. I have proposed converting them to Lightning Carriers by adding ski jumps and converting troop berthing and Marine equipment spaces to hangar deck and aircraft maintenance shops. I know the criticisms and do not dispute them. Lightning Carriers are nowhere near as capable as CVNs, admittedly. But a Lightning Carrier with a ski jump and 35-40 aircraft would be more than anybody else in the world has for an aircraft carrier--except UK and France, and I don't expect to be fighting UK or France any time soon. They would operate a second carriers in CVBGs on an interim basis until the Kitty Hawk/Midway CVs that I would want to build come online in the mid-2030s, about the time that their service lives begin to expire. Anyway, that just came to mind as I was writing this, so I'm just throwing it out there.
"I would pull back from the Persian/Arabian Gulf and Japan because of proximity to foreign missile attacks."
DeleteHmm ... really? In peacetime, there are no missile attacks so no need to pull back. In war, going in harm's way is what you're supposed to do so no need to pull back although you would need a specific mission to justify the exposure.
"If no ships were forward based, we would need some supporting activities for those that are deployed. I would propose putting a tender at Guam"
Again, this betrays your wedlock to the generic, mission-less, deployment scheme. If there are no forward based ships, why do we need Guam or a tender? The only use for a tender would be if ships were sailing in circles on pointless deployments and, if that's what you want, why not just base the ships at Guam and save the need for a tender? Do you see the inconsistencies in your various comments and proposals?
"But a Lightning Carrier with a ski jump and 35-40 aircraft"
DeleteYou're being exceedingly optimistic about the number of aircraft a ski-jump ship can carry. especially and LHA/LHD conversion. Study the existing ski jump carriers and note their dimensions and size of their air wings. Even the giant, purpose-built Queen Elizabeth can only carry 24-36 aircraft. Yes, the RN claims they could surge more but that's a claim not a fact and has never been done.
If the America class LHA were converted to ski jump, you'd lose the entire forward half of the deck for parking which would severely cut into the aircraft capacity. Even the Navy only claims a max of around 22 aircraft in pure aviation mode.
Remember, a ski jump carrier still needs large, cleared deck space for landings. A converted LHA would have very little parking space which, again, means a very small air wing - small to the point of useless.
Study this and see if you still think your conceptual air wing size holds up.
All the maps and videos of the concept show our BMD destroyers operating near Cyprus to shoot down Iranian missiles heading to Europe, meaning they can help protect only Turkey, Romania and Greece. As I explained in yet another article, Navy SM-3s don't have nearly the range needed for theater missile defense.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.g2mil.com/deveselu.htm
Destroyers operating off the Atlantic coast of Spain can only protect Spain from attack. The logic for basing destroyers at Rota is they are one week closer than Norfolk should they be needed near Cyprus in a crisis, assuming they stand ready for immediate deployment.
If the logic confuses you, just remember NMD and Navy BMD are a very profitable racket worth billions of dollars a year.