I’ve previously stated that I am, thus far, disappointed in
SecDef Hegseth. I had hoped he would
come in and clean house and, while he has fired a handful of people, the vast
majority of incompetent military leaders are still firmly in place. Similarly, SecNav Phelan has disappointed
me. An example is his latest
announcement that he is cancelling some $570M in various DEI, climate, and
AI-logistics contracts. While I applaud
these cancellations, they are incredibly small potatoes. They are the kind of thing that could have
been done between bites of his sandwich at lunch on the first day. How about going after some large, truly
catastrophically wasteful programs? Can’t
think of any? Well, how about cancelling
the rest of the Constellation class? How
about terminating the Ford class in place?
How about retiring the entire remaining LCS class and saving billions in
operating and maintenance costs? How
about terminating all unmanned contracts until someone comes up with a viable
CONOPS that demonstrates that they have any combat value? How about firing 90% of the flag officers and
returning their hundreds of staffers to sea duty? I could go on all day but you get the
idea.
There are unimaginable savings to be had but SecNav Phelan
is, so far, focused on the nearly trivial and almost free items (on a relative
basis). Come on, Phelan, do something
significant. It doesn’t require years of
study groups. If you can’t come up with tens
and hundreds of billions of dollars of savings off the top of your head, you
have no business being Secretary of the Navy.
On the other hand, if you can come up with the list … START CUTTING !!!
Totally agree...!! BUT... has anyone told him the LCS is worthless? Or that the Connie's are a waste of time and money??
ReplyDeleteWith NO background in the Navy, and evidently not a ComNavOps reader, he probably hasnt been keeping up diligently with naval affairs. So how will he get the real info on what needs to go?? Will the Navys spreadsheets on cost (which WE know have lots of hidden costs and accounting'magic') , no doubt delivered by some Flag that gushes praise for the programs, tell him there's not enough bang for the buck? Is he insulated and surrounded by all the folks who brought us decades of procurement failures?? While having a brutal accountant willing to hack and slash deeply is part of the job... I fear you've just hit upon a problem... a reason why perhaps Secretarial positions should be manned by people with prior service in the organizations they lead. Of course, then you run the risk of more of the same. I don't have an answer for which is right, or even more right. And it's not a full defense of his inaction on major reforms either. I just wonder how much "reality" is reaching him to act on...
"evidently not a ComNavOps reader"
DeleteWell, there's the real problem!
It's just about pardonable not to read ComNavOps but in that case he should be searching out other sources of critical thinking about the Navy. That's his job, isn't it, in a Trump administration?
DeleteThe establishment is incompetent and corrupt so find your information elsewhere. Is that so difficult to grasp?
Other departments got rid of their inspector general offices,
ReplyDeletemaybe dump DOT&E ? It not like the Navy pays attention to their
reports. Maybe reduce the number of ship name reports ?
More seriously, if the Navy wants unpersoned ships,
put the control system in a LCS, along with a good suite
of counter measures and then run a SINKEX against our
RobotRedLCS. The 40knt speed would finally be of use.
"maybe dump DOT&E ? It not like the Navy pays attention to their reports."
DeleteI have to strongly disagree. DOT&E is the only thing keeping the Navy even a little bit honest about weapon system performance. True ... the Navy doesn't pay any attention to DOT&E but Congress does and Congress then forces the Navy to perform at least some testing. For example, the Navy attempted to skip the shock testing for Ford and DOT&E called them out on it and then Congress mandated the tests. There have been many other such examples. What little actual performance testing of weapon systems there is, is due wholly to DOT&E.
DOT&E has done good things, but an insider told me it should go because it allows the Admirals to escape responsibility because they pull corrupt levers and hide things so it's approved by DOT&E. When the truth comes out they blame DOT&E.
DeleteI'm not quite sure what that means but it's important to keep in mind that DOT&E doesn't specify equipment or performance parameters. They simply test the systems to ensure that they meet the specs established by the Navy. If the specs are bad, no amount of DOT&E testing can fix that.
Delete"How about going after some large, truly catastrophically wasteful programs? Can’t think of any? Well, how about cancelling the rest of the Constellation class? How about terminating the Ford class in place? How about retiring the entire remaining LCS class and saving billions in operating and maintenance costs? How about terminating all unmanned contracts until someone comes up with a viable CONOPS that demonstrates that they have any combat value? How about firing 90% of the flag officers and returning their hundreds of staffers to sea duty?"
ReplyDeleteYep. Why not all of those?
And you could do them all between bites of that sandwich.
In addition, Hegseth told media recently that US lost to China in every Pentagon war game. As a SOD, having access to confidential information, should not say so or confirm this even if it is true. He should keep silent and push Pentagon to develop better weapons.
ReplyDeletehttps://interestingengineering.com/military/chinas-could-sink-all-us-carriers
It's concerning to see what SecDef has instituted as his procurement cuts. All cuts to the JLTV, all cuts to Hummvee procurement, cancellation of the M10 Booker, full on shift to drones and AI command, merging of Futures Command with TRADOC (when the point of Futures Command was to be independant of the orthodoxy of TRADOC), and his argument that we don't need a replacement for the M113 because that job can be done by autonomous drones.
ReplyDeleteThe job of an APC is to deliver troops to the battlefield. Drones haven't replaced troops yet.
"It's concerning to see what SecDef has instituted as his procurement cuts."
DeleteWhy are the cuts concerning? The JLTV has very limited use on the modern artillery-saturated battlefield. Reports claim that the M10 doesn't meet the need (no air drop, no C-130 transport, etc.). Hummvee has no real combat use and just places an additional demand on fuel logistics.
I don't see the problem with the cuts. In fact, I see some responsible management.
Now, some of the other moves (drones, AI, etc.) are concerning.
There seems to be an innate human tendency to resist cutting ANYTHING! Consider, though, how much better off would the Navy be if someone had, early on, cut the LCS, Zumwalt, and Ford, to name a few?
Don't fear cuts, embrace the lessons that each cut represents. Maybe next time the Army will learn a lesson and cut to the core of what it needs a light tank to be (assuming there's even a need for a light tank - something I'm dubious about) and will set REALISTIC and NON-NEGOTIABLE requirements. Cuts can, and should, produce better products in the future thanks to lessons learned ... assuming the US military is capable of learning lessons which, sadly, they seem not to be.
" We got quite a lot of use out of jeeps back in WW2."
DeleteWe did! And, if that was the role of the humvee, I'd be good with that. However, we've attempted to turn the humvee into a main combat vehicle by mounting all sorts of weapons on it, counting on it to provide gun support to an extent, and are using it as an unarmored APC. That's all kinds of wrong.
If we would just use it as we did the jeep, that would be fine. Of course, as a simple jeep, it's hugely overengineered and overpriced so I'd still be against it!
I don't follow land combat matters that closely but what I read indicates that the Army dropped some requirements to allow GD to be selected. In do so, the Army abandoned the essence of what made the light tank potentially desirable. From a Defense Express article,
"The U.S. Army had a viable project from BAE Systems with a reincarnated M8 participating in the Mobile Protected Firepower competition, but it was General Dynamics Land Systems that emerged as the winner after three key requirements their proposal did not meet were canceled"
""SecDef Hegseth has announced"
DeleteComment deleted as unsubstantiated. If you can find a reference to support your claim, feel free to re-post.
"We did! And, if that was the role of the humvee, I'd be good with that. However, we've attempted to turn the humvee into a main combat vehicle by mounting all sorts of weapons on it, counting on it to provide gun support to an extent, and are using it as an unarmored APC. That's all kinds of wrong."
DeleteWe did all these things with jeeps too, hanging machineguns and bazookas on those jeeps. I don't see the difference between putting machine guns and missile launchers on a hummvee. There's only so much weight a person can hump before fatigue sets in, especially with TOW, our main antitank missile, which needs an entire 9-man squad to disassemble it and carry it to a new fighting position, and which requires minutes to setup and take down.
One more thing to note: use of the Hummvee as a battlefield vehicle is a COMPROMISE due to the Army's force structure. The Army does not have enough Bradley IFVs and Stryker APCs to outfit the entire force. Effectively half of the Army (counting the reserves) are light infantry with no protected transport of their own, who are expected to make long range travel to the battlezone by truck, and then borrow IFVs or APCs from an Armor or Stryker brigade for that last mile assault under fire to the objective. The problem is that there aren't always IFVs and APCs available, and leg infantry has very poor stategic movement, so the Army's answer is to cut loose the Hummvees to the leg infantry to give them more mobility and a modicum of shrapnel protection.
DeleteThe answer to this is really that we should invest more in buying more Stryker APCs, and continuing the M113 tracked APC replacement program, so that our troops can actually reach the battlefield and fight.
On the other hand, I suppose if we have no intention to have a land war in China, and have no intention to fight Russia in Europe, then maybe we don't really need an army at all? Hegseth has directed greater procurement of long range missiles, which is something that I agree with, but we also need CENTCOM to stop wasting expensive missiles on the Houthis when JDAMs work just as well, are cheaper, and more importantly, are not cutting into our limited stockpile that we need to use on China.
"We did all these things with jeeps too, hanging machineguns and bazookas on those jeeps."
DeleteThe difference is that those additions were ad hoc field modifications and they were not in any way, shape, or form intended as our frontline, main weapons. In contrast, the Army has been formally weaponizing the humvee and it is intended to be part of our front line weapons.
"In contrast, the Army has been formally weaponizing the humvee and it is intended to be part of our front line weapons."
DeleteSeparate Anon here. Like I said, it's an Army compromise for the infantry divisions that lack protected transport. It's an Army brainbug that has persisted since WW2, where the majority of the infantry divisions were leg infantry that had trucks chopped to them on an ad hoc basis to make the long distance travel to the frontline.
At the end of the day, we chose not to mechanise our entire army. We chose to have half of our Army be leg infantry. So the only way our leg infantry divisions are going to have any sort of tactical mobility is by riding into combat in Hummvees. Ultimately it's the consequences of our past decisions coming home to roost.
I should also note that this is nothing really new. Hummvees have had pintle mounts for machineguns since day one, but so have most of the Army's ground vehicles, even the transport trucks, because these things are useful for self defense. Even the OG WW2 Jeep came with a post for mounting a machinegun, and this wasn't a field modification, this was a mounting solution that came directly from the factory that produced the Jeeps.
Like I said, the way to reverse this is to increase the production of Bradley IFVs, Stryker wheeled APCs, and AMPV tracked APCs. The language of his memo raises some concern:
"Divest outdated formations, including select armor and aviation units across the Total Army (Active, Reserve, National Guard)."
War is a numbers game. We should be increasing our manpower to absorb attrition, and we should not be divesting armor and aviation and thus reducing our firepower.
1. https://media.defense.gov/2025/May/01/2003702281/-1/-1/1/ARMY-TRANSFORMATION-AND-ACQUISITION-REFORM.PDF
From a Breaking Defense article,
ReplyDelete"Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll called the Booker acquisition decision “a classic example of sunk cost fallacy, and the Army doing something wrong.”
“We wanted to develop a small tank that was agile and could be dropped into places our regular tanks can’t. We got a heavy tank,” he added."
The Booker is a valid.item to cut. Hummvees, Strykers, Bradleys, AMPV, much less so.
DeleteYou've criticised the Armt fornusing the Hummvee as a combat vehicle, but Hegseth's transformation calls for using the ISV, an overgrown WINDOWLESS UNARMORED dune buggy, as the Armt's combat vic
https://idahonews.com/news/local/idaho-army-national-guards-116th-to-transition-from-armored-to-mobile-combat-team
DeleteWe're going from Abrams tanks and Bradley IFVs to dune buggies. Dune buggies that aren't even carrying weapons like Humvees.