LCS Bridge Wings

We’ve talked about the demise of the Navy’s in-house ship design expertise (General Board and BuShips) and the subsequent farming out of the design responsibility to industry and the negative consequences that engenders.  Here’s one small example of that phenomenon.  The Independence LCS variant was designed without bridge wings.  Bridge wings, as you know, are a fairly standard feature that allows the ship to be safely maneuvered in tight quarters such as when docking.

 

The lack of a bridge wing for the LCS was quickly found to be a problem and bridge wings were eventually incorporated into production beginning with USS Kansas City (LCS-22) and retrofitted to those ships lacking them.

 

In the photo below, you can see the LCS without bridge wings.

 

 

In the next photo, bridge wings have been added.

 

As best I can tell, the omission of bridge wings was a cost savings measure which, as it turned out, wound up costing more money after retrofitting, than it saved!  This also illustrates ComNavOps’ recurring theme about not designing WARships to a business case.  This business case design wound up costing more money, in the end, and produced a less efficient ship. 

 

Interestingly, the Swedish Visby corvette is a notable example of a ship without bridge wings – likely due to its extreme emphasis on stealth – but it compensates with an extensive camera system.

 

The Zumwalt class was also built without bridge wings and will likely never be retrofitted as the ships have been relegated to experimental use, for the time being.  I don’t know the rationale for omitting bridge wings on the Zumwalt – perhaps a stealth measure?  I also don’t know if Zumwalt has a compensating camera system.

Strike-Fighter Example

As the navy contemplates the next carrier aircraft, it is well to recall the state we’re in and how we got here.  The ‘state’ I’m referring to is a carrier air wing with only one type of combat aircraft, the F-18 Hornet.  The F-18 was designed as a combination strike and fighter aircraft and, as a combination, is badly flawed since it is optimized for neither the strike nor fighter role (see, “The Strikefighter Myth”).  It is not well suited for pure air combat as it lacks maneuverability, speed, acceleration, endurance/range, sensors, and other aspects that a modern air superiority fighter must have.  Similarly, the F-18 is not well suited for pure strike as it lacks a degree of all-weather/night effectiveness in terms of dedicated air-to-ground sensors, terrain following, targeting, speed, range, maneuverability, and other aspects that a modern strike aircraft must have.

 

We used to have dedicated strike aircraft such as the A-6 Intruder and dedicated fighters such as the F-14 Tomcat.  How did we neck down to a single, compromised, inadequate aircraft?  There’s a variety of reasons but they boil down to trying to build an air wing based on a business case instead of a combat effectiveness case.  The F-18 was a cost saving, business aircraft instead of a supremely effective combat aircraft.

 

What does this mean for our next aircraft?

 

The most important lesson from the F-18 is not to try to build a do-everything, combination strike-fighter.  We need to return to dedicated fighters and dedicated strike aircraft (if we even want strike aircraft ?!).

 

Many of you are already pounding out replies about the much hyped benefits of combination strike-fighters.  Before you finish your misguided comments, let’s take a closer look at the combination, strike-fighter concept by looking at the most famous example the Navy has of the ‘success’ of the strike-fighter.  Yeah, you know the one – it’s the only one.  It’s the Jan 17, 1991, Desert Storm mission by a pair of VFA-81 Sunliners, Lieutenant Commander Mark Fox and Lieutenant Nick Mongillo with CVW-17 flying off the USS Saratoga.  During the mission which was intended as a strike mission, the F-18 Hornets encountered enemy aircraft, shot down two of them with air-to-air missiles, and then continued on to bomb their original targets.

 

Wow!  This is the perfect example of why the strike-fighter combination is so awesome, right?  The aircraft are self-escorting and can fight their way through to the target, taking on all enemy aircraft, destroy the ground targets, and then fight their way back home.  What’s not to like about this?

 

Well, the reality is that this example was a one-in-a-million scenario that just happened to work out perfectly for a variety of reasons and is unlikely to ever be repeated and certainly not during a peer war.

 

An aircraft loaded with weapons for a strike mission cannot successfully engage in air-to-air combat.  The weapons load renders the aircraft non-stealthy, slow, and unmaneuverable.  The air combat word for that combination of characteristics is ‘dead’.  The only reason the F-18s were able to succeed in this scenario was the total ineptness of the Iraqi pilots. 

 

LtCdr Fox acknowledges this.  In his own words,

 

Talking about the strike-fighter concept that the F/A-18 represents, Fox has a definite opinion.  “This is the first time to my knowledge that an airplane scored a kill while carrying four 2,000-lb bombs, then continued on to hit its target.  If the MiGs had got behind us, we would have had no choice but to honor their threat.  You can’t do that with 8,000 lb of bombs.  We would have had to jettison ordnance to face them, and would have served their purpose in stopping our strike.  They failed, we succeeded.” (1)

 

Fox recognizes what so many outsiders don’t:  the strike-fighter is not a capable fighter in any scenario more challenging than a drone shoot down which is, essentially, what the Iraqi incident was.  The added drag and weight of bombs and missiles significantly impacts the aircraft’s already sub-optimal fighter characteristics.

 

VFA-81 Sunliner

As a point of interest, here’s the weapons load the aircraft carried for that Desert Storm mission :

 

• 4x 2,000-lb Mk84 Low Drag, General Purpose Bomb
• 2x AIM-9L Sidewinder
• 2x AIM-7 Sparrow

 

Examining the weapons load we note that attempting to conduct aerial combat against a competent enemy peer fighter while lugging 4x 2,000 lb bombs would be suicidal.  Here’s the other overlooked aspect:  if the strike-fighter jettisons the ground attack weapons, it is left with a very minimal air-to-air weapons load – 2 Sidewinders and 2 Sparrows, in this case.  That kind of a minimal air-to-air load is starting the fight at a decided disadvantage.

 

A strike-fighter, by definition, carries a less than optimum load of ground attack weapons since it has to give up hard points to the air-to-air missiles and it carries a less than optimum load of air combat weapons since it has to give up hard points to the ground attack weapons.  Thus, both missions are compromised and sub-optimal right from the start.

 

The next issue for a strike-fighter is training time and, hence, competence.  There is simply not enough flight training time for pilots to be supremely competent at both missions.  In fact, today’s pilots are barely staying flight certified when not deployed and the use of waivers to maintain flight certification is becoming commonplace.  How can a pilot be supremely skilled at both missions when he can’t even get enough monthly flight hours to remain flight certified without waivers?

 

The only possible conclusion from this is that a strike-fighter can only succeed when the opponent is so incompetent as to be barely flight-capable, as was the case in the Desert Storm incident.  In any other scenario, the strike-fighter is a kill or, at best, a mission kill, waiting to happen.  It is certainly not a viable concept against a competent, peer enemy.

 

What does all of this tell us about the next Navy fighter?  The answer is crystal clear:  do not attempt to produce another strike-fighter.  Make the next fighter a pure fighter.  The A-6/F-14 combination is the example to follow, not the F-18/F-35.  The A-6 and F-14 were huge successes, for their time, whereas the F-18 and F-35 are mediocre and marginally successful, at best.

 

The next fighter must be a pure fighter.

 

 

 

_________________________________________

 

(1)https://theaviationgeekclub.com/this-vfa-81-f-a-18c-driver-scored-the-first-of-only-two-u-s-navy-mig-kill-during-operation-desert-storm/

Flat Tire - Mission Kill?

The DOT&E report on the Initial Operational Test & Evaluation (IOT&E) trials of the Marine’s Amphibious Combat Vehicle (ACV) illustrates a concern related to the trend towards wheeled vehicles instead of tracked and that is the age old automobile plague of flat tires.  Many followers of armored vehicles have speculated about the performance and, therefore, advisability of substituting wheels for tracks with the obvious concerns of traction, durability, vulnerability, etc. being raised.  Now, we have the IOT&E results to offer some actual data.

 

ACV land mobility in the desert environment was often degraded by tire failures, which led to 2-hour mission delays while crews replaced or swapped tires. The ACV platoon did not have a hydraulic jack or other means to lift the ACV without an LVSR Wrecker. Some tire failures could be attributed to incorrect tire pressure settings in the Central Tire Inflation System (CTIS) on the ACV. As crews actively monitored CTIS settings, tire failures were less frequent. (1)

 

So, to no great surprise, we see that wheeled vehicles are subject to flat tires.  The DOT&E report notes two main issues:

 

1. Modified driving may be required.  DOT&E notes that ACV drivers will have to learn to modify their driving to avoid obstacles that may penetrate tires and cause flats.  According to Gunnery Sgt. Christopher Sorrell:

 

“Since IOT&E, we’ve had the ability to change tires out more expediently, and since we’ve also learned how to ultimately not pop or puncture more tires, based off of terrain, and actually making smarter decisions as drivers of what we should and cannot maneuver over,” he added. “And comparable to an AAV, it’s the same. We can maneuver over anything that an AAV can maneuver – no changes in that – but it is like, hey, am I really going to roll over a bed of nails. In an AAV, I could, but maybe I’m not going to do that in an ACV.” (2)

 

So, the solution to flat tires is to learn what the vehicle can and cannot drive over?  Hmm …

 

On the face of it, that seems like a reasonable suggestion/solution and a simple matter of training.  However, a bit more thought reveals a lot wrong with that.  While avoidance of suspect obstacles may be easily achieved in a staged test under ideal conditions, what happens when the driver/vehicle is confronted with darkness, fog, rain, confusion, and the stress of combat where avoidance of certain types of terrain or obstacles is not the highest priority?  How will the driver detect and avoid suspect obstacles then?  For that matter what happens if the only immediately desirable direction happens to lead through suspect terrain or obstacles?  Does the driver abort the mission due to a ‘bed of nails’?  Is that really all it will take for an enemy to stop an ACV movement or assault … just scatter some nails?

 

Other than a mine, tracks don’t care what they travel over.  By using wheels, we’ll be giving up some mobility and operational capability.  We’ll have combat vehicles with obvious and common limitations.  Is this really combat-desirable?

Wheeled ACV

 

2. Tire replacement is problematic.  From the USNI News website,

 

The [DOT&E] report suggested the Marines think about “adding a spare tire kit at the section level” and find a better way to change the vehicle’s tires.

 

Sorrell described the tire issues as a learning experience for the Marines, who used trial and error to figure out what worked best in the field. For example, during testing, the Marines would dig a hole in the ground to change a tire because at the time they did not have tools like a jack.

 

“But now we have the capability, since IOT&E, to basically bring an air compressor to the field with us, be able to lift a strut up in the air underneath the tire, and change a tire out in less than 30 minutes,” Sorrell said. (2)

 

Doesn’t having a fast, easy method for changing tires on a wheeled combat vehicle seem like something someone in the program should have thought of long ago?  But, I digress …

 

Is driving over a stick or obstacle the only way to get a flat tire?  What about shrapnel and small arms fire?  Is that all it will take to stop an ACV … just shoot out a tire?  I’m not terribly knowledgeable about wheeled vehicle combat operations but is a single flat tire really enough to mission kill a vehicle and require immediate changing as seemed to be the case in the IOT&E trials?  If so, that would seem to be a poor design for a combat vehicle potentially subject to large amounts of shrapnel and small arms fire.

 

On a closely related note, the ACV size and weight present some recovery challenges.

 

The weight, height, and size of the ACV made recovery of a disabled ACV challenging and time consuming, at times requiring additional LVSR support. When vehicles sustained severe damage to suspension components or became mired, one or more LVSRs were required to recover the ACV. LVSRs are on the Table of Organization for the Assault Amphibian Battalion, and Marine Corps Maintenance Battalions. Additional LVSRs may be required to support future ACV platoon or company-level operations. (1)

 

 

Summary

 

I find myself deeply troubled by the US military’s push toward wheeled vehicles.  I don’t follow the issue closely enough so I don’t know whether it’s been carefully studied or not but my vague impression from reading bits of discussion over the years is that this is another example of an assumption based on no tests and no experience.  Common sense would suggest that tracks are far superior in terms of ruggedness and performance.  There may be financial arguments for wheeled vehicles but, as we’ve often stated, combat assets should never be designed to business cases.  Combat vehicles should be designed for maximum combat performance and all other factors assume a secondary importance.

 

I’ll continue to follow this with great interest.  As I say, I’m not a combat vehicle expert.

 

 

 

________________________________

 

(1)Director, Operational Test & Evalution, “FY2020 Annual Report”, Jan 2021, p. 121-123

 

(2)USNI News website, “Marines Defend ACV Development as Program Matures”, Mallory Shelbourne, 19-Feb-2021,

https://news.usni.org/2021/02/18/marines-defend-acv-development-as-program-matures

Cruise Ships

I’ve repeatedly stated that the Navy has moved from designing WARships to designing glorified cruise ships.  I’ve also repeatedly stated that we can significantly reduce ship construction costs by eliminating excessive crew comfort features.  Of course, that goes hand in hand with eliminating interminable deployments in favor of home port based training, maintenance, and occasional short duration missions.  The eliminated crew comforts can be provided by shore based facilities.

 

I stumbled across a partial listing of ‘cruise ship’ features of the USS Kitty Hawk (CV-63) which demonstrates some of the non-combat, non-essential, cruise ship, crew comforts that were built into the ship.  Here is a partial list of some non-combat, non-essential crew comforts that were part of the USS Kitty Hawk (1):

Closed Circuit Television:  6 channels  [if the crew is working hard, there won’t be time for watching TV]
Average Soda Consumption Daily:  5,040 cans  [that explains some of our weight problems]
Public Works Force:  300 personnel  [what is this???]
Number of ATMs:  4 (Navy-specific)  [if you eliminate ship’s stores, you don’t need money aboard ship]
Chaplains:  3  [make them shore based]
Ship's Retail Stores:  2  [it’s a WARship, not a shopping mall]
Dentists:  5  [make them shore based]
Barber Shops:  2  [make them shore based]
Exercise Facilities:  5  [if the crew is working hard, there won’t be any interest in exercise during off duty time]
Lawyers:  2  [make them shore based]
Post Office:  1  [pick your mail up on shore]
Pounds of Mail Processed Daily:  2,500 pounds  [how many sailors must be employed processing and distributing 2500 lbs of mail every day?]

This list is, by no means, comprehensive.  It was just a partial list of some interesting features. Consider, though, the number of compartments even this partial list requires and the number of sailors working to support these non-combat, non-essential functions and you can see where significant savings begin to accrue by eliminating them.  I'm sure a comprehensive list would be 2x-10x larger!

 

Consider, also, the secondary effects of eliminating these functions.  By reducing the number of ‘comfort support’ crew, you also reduce the number of crew supporting the support crew.  You need fewer cooks, fewer laundry workers, etc.  You can also reduce the number/size of galleys, food storage, water generation and storage, laundry, heads, berthing, etc.

 

Then, there’s the tertiary effects.  Once you’ve eliminated the crew comfort functions and the facilities and people supporting them, you wind up with a smaller, lighter ship and can design in smaller engines, smaller HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning), smaller distillers, smaller chillers, and so on.  It’s a domino effect of savings … all from eliminating cruise ship comforts.

Interesting, huh? It shows how much we've moved from designing WARships to designing cruise ships.

 

USS Kitty Hawk

 

 

_____________________________________

 

(1)Kitty Hawk Vets website,

https://www.kittyhawkvets.com/ship-awards

If The Navy Had Its Way

We’ve talked about the various attempts by the Navy to early retire the Aegis cruisers among other misguided actions.  Thank goodness Congress slapped them down.  However, chillingly, have you ever thought about the consequences if Congress and other factors hadn’t intervened over the years?  Just for fun, let’s pull together all the Navy’s attempts and see what kind of Navy we’d have if the Navy had gotten its way the last couple of decades.

 

Here’s what the Navy has attempted to do:

 

• Retire all the Ticonderoga Aegis cruisers
• Build 55 LCS
• Early retire 2 carriers at their mid-life refueling and overhaul points (Washington in 2014 and Truman in 2019)(1)
• Build a class of LCS-based frigates

 

 

 

	Current	Attempted
Carriers (Nimitz, Ford)	11	9
Cruisers (Ticonderoga)	22	0
Destroyers (Zumwalt, Burke)	72	72
Frigate (LCS)	0	20?a
LCS	23	55

 

 

^a Assumes a 20-ship build as with the future Constellation frigate class

 

 

 

What jumps out from the table is the shift that would have occurred from the current number of high end and highly capable ships to low end, less capable ones.  That is what the Navy wanted to do.  Thankfully, Congress and other factors stopped them.

 

Frightening.

 

 

 

______________________________

 

(1)Breaking Defense website, “Pentagon To Retire USS Truman Early, Shrinking Carrier Fleet To 10”, Sydney J. Freedberg Jr., 27-Feb-2019,

https://breakingdefense.com/2019/02/pentagon-to-retire-uss-truman-early-shrinking-carrier-fleet-to-10/

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.

Speak And Remove All Doubt

There’s an old and very wise proverb that goes,

 

It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool then to speak and remove all doubt.

 

After reading the latest memo from SecDef Austin, it is clear that he is in the process of removing all doubt.

 

Austin issued a memo to the Department of Defense in which he outlined his priorities.  The memo has no redeeming value, whatsoever, and removes all doubt about the SecDef.  He lists three top level priorities (1):

 

• Defending the Nation
• Take Care of Our People
• Succeed through Teamwork

 

Well, that pretty much says nothing but let’s see what Austin's more detailed priorities reveal:

 

 

Defending the Nation

 

Defeat Covid-19 – Austin has this to say about the virus,

 

The greatest proximate challenge to our Nation’s security is the threat of COVID-19.

 

I’m sorry but that’s garbage and patently false.  The virus has certainly disrupted our economy [well, the virus hasn’t, it was the media driven panic frenzy that led to the draconian measures which disrupted our economy – none of which had any positive impact on the virus] but it is not a threat to national security.  That’s not even remotely true.  For 99% of infected people, the virus is just a nuisance and for a very large percentage, it is asymptomatic.  This virus is barely worse than the common flu.

 

Prioritize China as the Pacing Threat – I’m on board with this although Austin reduces the topic to a PowerPoint cavalcade of nearly incomprehensible buzzwords,

 

We will ensure that our approach toward China is coordinated and synchronized across the enterprise to advance our priorities, integrated into domestic and foreign policy in a whole-of-government strategy, strengthened by our alliances and partnerships, and supported on a bipartisan basis in Congress. (1)

 

Address Advanced and Persistent Threats – This appears to be addressing the remaining threats of Russia, Iran, NKorea, and terrorism.  That’s great but, unfortunately, the method of addressing those threats would appear to be appeasement,

 

… using all of our tools to lower the risk of escalation with our adversaries … (1)

 

You don’t address enemies by doing everything you can to ‘lower the risk of escalation’.  That’s the definition of appeasement.  You address enemies by demonstrating that you have the courage, will, and capability to crush them and then you put that determination and capability into action from time to time so as to impart a bone-deep lesson.

 

Innovate and Modernize – The scary part of this priority is,

 

Where necessary, we will divest of legacy systems and programs that no longer meet our security needs, while investing smartly for the future. (1)

 

This is the same failed policy we’ve been pursuing of abandoning firepower in pursuit of some magical offset that will grant us victory through technology and ignores our enemy’s plans and capabilities.  For example, the Marines have dropped legacy tanks in pursuit of some kind of magic hidden outpost where they will perform anti-surface and anti-submarine warfare in some unexplained, invisible manner.

 

Tackle the Climate Crisis – Setting aside the utter lack of proof that there is such a thing as climate crisis (go study historical climate cycles dating back millions of years and you’ll see that we’re not experiencing anything noteworthy), it is not the job of the military to solve a climate issue.  This is a betrayal of the military’s responsibility to the nation.

 

 

Take Care of Our People

 

Grow Our Talent – This is just PowerPoint garbage.

 

Build Resilience and Readiness – This would be a great priority except that it doesn’t mean what it says.  Here’s what it really means,

 

We maintain and enhance force readiness and develop the capabilities we need to protect America when we fully embrace a diversity of backgrounds, experiences, and thought. (1)

 

This is diversity and social engineering masquerading as a military goal.  Readiness is a function of repair depots, maintenance, training, etc., not diversity. 

 

Ensure Accountable Leadership – Well this one is already out the window.  If there was any accountability, Austin would be gone after penning this piece of garbage.  Instead, this is all about political removal of conservative beliefs.

 

… working to stamp out extremism … (1)

 

 

Succeed Through Teamwork

 

Join Forces with Allies and Partners – This is the completely discredited concept of sharing the military responsibility so that we don’t have to maintain as strong a military and can redirect our funding to social programs.  The Thousand Ship Navy was a failed example of this.

 

Partnership with Our Nation - ?????  Partner?????  Would the military 'partner' with someone else?  Are they taking bids from various countries?  This is some kind of garbage about … well … I really don’t know what this is other than it’s a waste of the paper it was written on.

 

Unity Within DoD – More compete meaningless gibberish.

 

 

 

Conclusion

Well, there you have it … the defining tome from your top military figure.  Impressive, huh?  I would have a hard time intentionally writing a more worthless piece of garbage and Austin meant this to be serious.  I had to check to see if it was April Fool's Day but, sadly, it wasn't.  Almost none of the memo addressed warfighting, the DoD’s main responsibility, and what little touched on it was so corrupted by social engineering and utter gibberish as to be incomprehensible and worthless.  As worthless a document as I’ve seen. 

 

SecDef Austin has spoken and removed all doubt.

 

 

 

_________________________________

 

(1)USNI News website, “SECDEF Lloyd Austin’s Message to the Force”, 4-Mar-2021,

https://news.usni.org/2021/03/04/secdef-lloyd-austins-message-to-the-force