Posts tagged as:

CNO

The Tug and Salvage Fleet T-ATS(X) has a Builder!

by Craig Hooper on March 26, 2018

As a staunch advocate for the Navy’s tug and salvage fleet, I am thrilled to see the drama-filled T-ATS(X) program head towards production (some history here). It has been a long road for this important but low-profile and oft-ignored vessel–the T-ATS(X) wallowed under multiple RFIs for years. It nearly foundered after several efforts to privatize […]

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Overlooked in the CNO’s CSIS Speech

by admin on October 5, 2016

So the U.S. Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral John Richardson, gave a speech at CSIS, and everyone is excited about his surprise termination of the term “A2/AD”. That’s all well and good–I have hated the A2/AD debate since the term crawled out from the torrid fever swamps of swarm boats and carrier killers (Read this, for […]

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As the oil industry races to put modern platform support vessels and anchor handling ships into layup, the eight-ship “tug and salvage” T-ATS(X) program is getting kinda tough to justify. Why build new ships if the Navy can buy suitable hulls for far less? Right now there’s plenty of ships on the market that would make […]

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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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David Larter over at Navy Times has an interesting story up, detailing the average time Navy combatants have spent at sea over the past three years. Go take a look. The data, apparently acquired from the Center for Naval Analyses, is good stuff–you can break it down to the individual ship level for almost every […]

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The future U.S. Navy is full of ferries. And the Nation should not only tolerate them, but embrace them, and accept them for what they are–good, capable, handy-sized ships of civilian origin. In the right CIVMAR hands, ferries are do-anything, economical “environmentally-friendly” platforms, capable of putting right-sized forces in the right place at the right […]

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In a rare–and long overdue–victory for strategic realists, the normally business-first Military Sealift Command (MSC) has abruptly cancelled plans for the JHSV fleet to be operated by civilian contractors. The Green-Eyeshade crowd–the annoying folks who think that war should be run like a modern, “lean” and “just-in-time” business–lost big today. I couldn’t be happier. What’s […]

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In the game of “annual” Navy conferences, it seems every naval “Community”, no matter how small, has a conference of their own. Sail on surface ships as a Line Officer? Go to the Surface Navy Association meeting. Special Operators have their convo. Submariners have theirs. Marines have a few. Aviators have whatever they are calling Tailhook […]

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It is high time to stop the proliferation of Portable Aircraft Carrier Killing Systems–or PACKS. There’s no need to sell PACKS–dangerous tobacco-delivery systems–at sea, and no need to subsidize sales of ’em at bases. Bear with me. We all know cigarettes are dangerous to individuals and hurt others via second-hand smoke. But I’ll bet you […]

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Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) Admiral Greenert’s call to put “Warfighting First” has focused attention on the Navy’s overall lack of offensive firepower. The Surface Navy, in particular, is wringing their hands over their community’s now ingrained (and almost congenital) Praetorian Guard “protect-the-carrier-or-big-deck-amphib” defensiveness, and there’s now an effort afoot to remedy things. That’s good. […]

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