Surface Navy: Don’t Defund The Salvage and Tug Fleet:

January 13, 2015

As the U.S. Navy strives to become a lean-and-mean “warfighting-first” fleet, Pentagon cost-cutters will, by FY 16, reduce the American Navy’s modest rescue, salvage and tug fleet by half–and the mad warrior-accountants may even go farther, entirely eliminating the tug and salvage/rescue fleet and privatizing the whole tug and rescue/salvage mission. Eliminating half the Military […]

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Does “Warfighting First” Put Ship-handling Second?

December 26, 2014

If the U.S. Navy is really putting “Warfighting First“, then, well, why not just turn the non-fighting seamanship, navigation and ship-handling work over to civilian mariners? The connection between the conn and battle at sea is less intimate than ever–and civilian mariners are generally better qualified in ship operations, have more experience conning ships, and […]

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The Eleven Carrier Fleet Is…Only Seven

December 18, 2014

Over on the excellent Navy Matters Blog there’s a little bit of a low-grade panic brewing up over the apparent mismatch of an “eleven carrier fleet” with only nine carrier air wings. Dastardly things are afoot, it seems. With one member of the “eleven-carrier fleet” constantly committed to a three-year refueling/refit cycle, the fear is […]

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New Navy Budget Buys…Time:

December 11, 2014

For a last-second, end-of-year compromise, the “Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act of 2015” does a surprisingly good job of preserving America’s naval industrial base. To me, it’s less about buying ships and more about buying…time. The Act offers the Nation a measure of flexibility–if it advances intact, the 11-Carrier fleet is (relatively) secure for […]

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Navy Strips CVN-79 Of Close-In AAW Enablers

December 5, 2014

Did anybody notice how the Navy responded to the CSBA report, “Commanding the Seas: A Plan to Reinvigorate U.S. Navy Surface Warfare“?  It seems the Navy’s CVN-builders are less than enthusiastic about Bryan Clark’s call to fundamentally shift the Fleet’s air-defense protocol. The CSBA report, as we have been discussing here and here, urges a […]

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Don’t Fear the Cruise Missile Threat–Manage it!

December 2, 2014

When confronted at sea, Americans have an unbroken, century-long record of building new maritime competitors–whomever they are–into ten feet tall, impossible-to-defeat monsters targeted directly at the good ‘ole U.S.A.. Maybe it’s some institutional holdover from America’s early underdog struggles against the British Fleet, but this habit of fearfully over-hyping anything and everything challenging in the […]

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CSBA Puts Old Surface Warfare Wine In New Bottles

November 28, 2014

For the past seventy years, U.S. surface combatants have been focused on defending aircraft carriers from either airborne or submerged threats. This all-important defensive mission has–for better or worse–defined America’s Surface Combatant Fleet–the fleet’s platforms, weapons and (most importantly) it’s mindset. The Surface Fleet’s overarching protective requirement has permeated everything about the surface combatant fleet. […]

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Digesting A Mean-Spirited Attack On SECNAV Travel :

November 18, 2014

Can rational DC people squelch those folks who traffic in “gotcha” stories? Today’s AP story on Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus‘ travel habits–written by AP reporter Lolita C. Baldor–is just an outright smear-job. Shame on Secretary of the Army John McHugh and the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments’ Bryan Clark (color me shocked Bryan […]

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End The “Five Naval Shipyards” Meme

November 12, 2014

A few decades and a couple defense cuts ago, some wise ‘ole marketer floated the concept that America’s national security depended upon the guaranteed health of the (then) six “large” U.S. naval shipyards: Northrop Grumman’s Avondale, Ingalls and Newport News yards and General Dynamics’ Bath Ironworks, NASSCO and Electric Boat acquisitions. This idea of a […]

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Export Subs: Simplicity Can Sell

November 6, 2014

Conventional sub buyers have a lot in common with those pesky teenagers who think, in an iPhone 6 era, it’s tremendously gauche to rock a lowly iPhone 4. Computer guru Steve Jobs could have mined the arms business for ideas on how to build out Apple’s retail empire. Conventional sub vendors learned long ago that […]

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