The Ship Model Forum

New in 2021: Here are all the ships the Navy will commission and christen in the coming year
Geoff Ziezulewicz
4 days ago


Streamers shoot into the air after Irene Hirano Inouye, wife of the late Sen. Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, broke a bottle of champagne on the bow of a warship bearing his name at Bath Iron Works in June 2019. (David Sharp/AP)
The U.S. Navy will commission seven ships in 2021 and christen another eight, according to data provided by Naval Sea Systems Command.
The guided-missile destroyer fleet will welcome DDG-118, Daniel Inouye, named after the late U.S. senator from Hawaii, while the littoral combat ships Oakland, Minneapolis-St. Paul and Mobile are expected to join the LCS community.
The expeditionary mobile base Miguel Keith will be commissioned, named in honor of the late Marine Corps lance corporal who received a posthumous Medal of Honor for heroism during the Vietnam War.

(...SNIPPED)

HII Begins Fabrication Of DDG 51 Flight III Destroyer Jeremiah Denton
Huntington Ingalls Industries’ (HII) Ingalls Shipbuilding division officially started fabrication of the fourth Arleigh Burke­-class (DDG 51) Flight III destroyer for the U.S. Navy, the future USS Jeremiah Denton (DDG 129). The start of fabrication signifies the first 100 tons of steel have been cut.

Xavier Vavasseur 08 Jan 2021

DDG 129 will be the third Arleigh Burke-class destroyer built in the Flight III configuration by HII at Ingalls Shipbuilding (and the fourth ship in the series), following DDG 125 Jack H. Lucas (the first Flight III ship) and DDG 128 Ted Stevens. DDG 126 Louis H. Wilson Jr. (the second Flight III ship) is being built by General Dynamics Bath Iron Works while DDG 127 Patrick Gallagher is an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer built in a previous configuration known as Flight IIA Technology Insertion.

DDG 129’s name honors former U.S. Sen. Jeremiah Denton, a Vietnam War veteran who was awarded the Navy Cross for his heroism while a prisoner of war. After graduating from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1946, Denton went on to serve in the Navy for 34 years as a test pilot, flight instructor and squadron leader. Following decades of military service, Denton was elected to the Senate in 1980 where he represented the state of Alabama for six years.


(...SNIPPED)

Do the earliest Arleigh Burke-class destroyers still have legs? The US Navy thinks so.
By: David B. Larter   1 day ago


Destroyers Mahan and Laboon underway in the Virginia Capes. The Navy is backing away from a plan to upgrade all its destroyers. (MC2 Jonathan Trejo/U.S. Navy)
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Navy has a problem: The Arleigh Burke-class destroyer program was too successful.
Between 1991, when the Navy commissioned the USS Arleigh Burke, and 1998, when it commissioned the USS Mahan, the service built the class at a pace of three per year. Now, as those ships are bearing down on their 35-year expected hull life, the Navy wants to grow its fleet, but it lacks the budget and capacity to modernize those first 21 ships to the latest configurations.
So while the fleet will try to keep them around as long as possible, it will have to get creative in its problem-solving approach, said Vice Adm. James Kilby, the Navy’s top requirements officer.
“We built our DDGs faster than we can modernize given the budget today,” Kilby said in a virtual Q&A at the Surface Navy Association’s annual symposium. “So we made a decision some years ago, they leave 21 ships in their current state and continue to work on them but not modernize them in the [latest Aegis] configuration. I have [the surface warfare director, Rear Adm. Paul Schlise], working on a number of things that we want to keep relevant for as long as possible, and I think they will be relevant for a long time.”

(...SNIPPED)

The Navy Wants To Get Rid Of Its Nearly Brand New Patrol Boats
The Navy is looking to have all of its Mk VI patrol boats, the oldest of which it acquired just six years ago, decommissioned by the end of the year.
By Joseph Trevithick and Tyler Rogoway February 15, 2021

The War Zone

USN


The U.S. Navy is looking to divest its nearly-new Mk VI patrol boats, the oldest of which are just six years old, and has already begun laying the groundwork to do so. Barring an order to change course from President Joe Biden's administration or intervention by Congress, the service plans to remove all 12 of these boats, examples of which are based in Guam, as well as in the continental United States, and forward-deployed in the Persian Gulf, from service before the end of the year.
An unclassified General Administration (GENADMIN) message that The War Zone reviewed said that the Navy is presently looking to get rid of the Mk VIs by the end of the 2021 Fiscal Year, or September 30 of this year. The GENADMIN came from the office of Vice Admiral James Kilby, Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Warfighting Requirements and Capabilities, also known as N9, and is dated February 5, 2021. A source familiar with the state of the program says that Naval Expeditionary Combat Command (NECC), to which all of these patrol boats are presently assigned, could begin retiring them as early as next month.

(...SNIPPED)

Surface ship readiness continues to struggle, US Navy inspections show
By: David B. Larter   3 hours ago
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Navy’s surface fleet continues to struggle to keep its ships adequately maintained, according to the Board of Inspection and Survey, an entity responsible for monitoring the condition of the service’s ships.
The surface fleet was scored as “degraded” in more than half of the “functional areas” scored by the famously invasive INSURV inspectors, with 11 of 21 being so designated, according to the annual unclassified report to Congress. Those areas include main propulsion systems; electrical systems; damage-control systems; anti-submarine warfare systems; and for the second year in a row, the Aegis weapons system, which serves as the combat brain of the Navy’s cruisers and destroyers.
Furthermore, 14 of 21 areas were listed as below the six-year scores average for the surface fleet, meaning 67 percent of the areas inspected were either degraded or worse than the surface fleet average over the past half decade.

(...SNIPPED)

Active Ships in the US Navy
The Theodore Roosevelt and Nimitz Carrier Strike Groups steam in formation on scheduled deployments to the 7th Fleet area of operations. (U.S. Navy/Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Elliot Schaudt)
Military.com | By Hope Hodge Seck
The U.S. Navy may not have the most ships of any country's fleet, but it is well established as the greatest power on the world's seas. The Navy owns 11 of the world's 43 active aircraft carriers -- and that doesn't count its nearly two dozen flat-decked amphibious ships that might well be considered carriers in their own right.
Despite this impressive power on the seas, leaders continue to have concerns about how many ships are in the U.S. Navy inventory, warning that competing maritime powers such as China are growing in naval strength and may soon have ocean dominance.
Since December 2016, the Navy has called for a fleet of at least 355 ships, up from its current battle-force total of fewer than 300. This is the minimum number leaders have said is required to conduct all required global missions. But the daunting cost of building that fleet -- an estimated $26.6 billion per year for 30 years -- and the challenge of ramping up shipyard work to meet demand have kept progress slow.
The 30-year shipbuilding plan released by the Navy in 2020 has the service reaching a fleet of 355 ships by 2049. It expects to build its active ship total to 305 by the end of 2021. The Navy is also pursuing a number of unmanned ship platforms, large and small. These will not count toward its 355-ship goal, however.
How Many Ships Are in the U.S. Navy
According to data compiled and updated by the Navy, here is the current total of battle-force ships as of March 2, 2021:
Aircraft Carriers: 11
Surface Combatants: 114
Submarines: 68
Amphibious Warfare Ships: 33
Mine Warfare Ships: 8
Combat Logistics Ships: 30
Fleet Support: 32
Auxiliary Support: 1
Combatant Craft: 0
Other: 0
Total Battle-Force Ships in Inventory: 297
Total Active Ships in Commission: 251
(The number of ships active in commission includes those that are commissioned but not battle-ready, such as the USS Constitution; and excludes most combat logistics and fleet support ships.)
(...SNIPPED)

Virginia lawmakers prepare to battle the Pentagon over a potential cut to the carrier fleet
By: Joe Gould and David B. Larter   1 hour ago
WASHINGTON – Lawmakers are warning the Navy and Biden Administration that it is heading into a political blind alley in the wake of a report that the Biden administration is weighing retiring an aircraft carrier early to save money.
“This is one of the things that gets revisited again and again, and I’ll tell you now that I will fight for the same outcome as last Congress,” said House Armed Services Committee Vice Chair Elaine Luria, D-Va., said Monday at a Hudson Institute event. “We’ve invested a lot in our carriers, and it’s not time to decommission them halfway through their life.”
Retiring an aircraft carrier early would save the Navy several billions of dollars in both planned maintenance, personnel and operating costs over the remainder of the ship’s life, but such efforts have repeatedly been quashed by Congress going back at least a decade.
The Pentagon is expected to propose a budget that is essentially the same as last year’s, and to save money it is revisiting a Trump Administration proposal to cancel the carrier Harry S. Truman’s mid-life overhaul and nuclear reactor refueling, according to a report from USNI News.
In 2019, the Navy said it could save as much as $ 1.5 billion just in planning costs for the refueling, and when the Navy tried to cancel the George Washington’s midlife overhaul in 2013, it was estimated that retiring Washington would save a total of about $5 billion total for the years-long maintenance period. But retiring a carrier with a planned 25 years left of service has always been a bridge too far for Congress, and there is little reason to believe a renewed attempt to retire Truman would be any more successful than the last two times DoD tried.

(...SNIPPED)

The US Navy’s shaky plan to save its shipyards is getting overhauled
By: Joe Gould and David B. Larter   2 days ago
WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Navy is reworking its tenuous plan to revitalize its public shipyards, where the fleet’s nuclear maintenance is done, as it has become clear that the facilities can’t meet the needs of the current fleet, let alone accommodate a growing fleet.
The head of Naval Sea Systems Command, Vice Adm. Bill Galinis told the House Armed Services Committee readiness subcommittee that the Navy is studying how much money it would need to accelerate its ongoing 20-year, $21 billion plan to recapitalize its four public shipyards by five or ten years.
To go faster and meet the needs of a growing fleet, the Navy is trying to determine how to juggle ship maintenance and repair work with renovations of aging dry docks and equipment associated with its Shipyard Infrastructure Optimization Plan, or SIOP. That may require extra funding, Galinis said.

(...SNIPPED)

US Navy inks deal for a tenth Virginia-class submarine
By: David B. Larter   2 days ago
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Navy on Friday sealed the deal on a 10th ship in its latest iteration of the Virginia-class attack submarine, issuing a $2.4 billion adjustment on a contract initially awarded in December 2019.
The original contract was for nine boats with an option for a 10th, which brings the total cost of the contract with prime contractor General Dynamics Electric Boat to $24.1 billion. The net increase for the contract is $1.89 billion, according to a General Dynamics release. Huntington Ingalls Industries’ Newport News shipyard is the partner yard in the program.
The president of General Dynamics Electric Boat, Kevin Graney, said in a statement that the shipyard is pleased to have the work and that his team is ready to take on the challenge of simultaneously building the Virginia class and the new — and much larger — Columbia-class next-generation ballistic missile submarine.

(...SNIPPED)

Navy Speeds Up Ship Retirements as It Ramps Up Investment in New Platforms
28 May 2021
Military.com | By Hope Hodge Seck
The Navy is on a mission to transform the fleet with innovative new ship platforms -- and it's forging ahead with plans to retire old ships to support that effort.
The service's $163.87 billion fiscal 2022 budget request, narrowly up from $162.9 billion last year, includes funding for a smaller fleet of 346,200 sailors, down 1,600 from last year's end strength. A Defense Department budget summary notes that the smaller force is due in part to the Navy's decommissioning plans, particularly the 2021 retirement of the amphibious assault ship Bonhomme Richard following a devastating fire.
"These reductions are partially offset by new construction crews on various platforms including Virginia-class submarines and Arleigh Burke-class destroyers," it notes.

(...SNIPPED)

Navy releases long-range shipbuilding plan that drops emphasis on 355 ships, lays out fleet design priorities
By: Megan Eckstein   3 days ago
WASHINGTON – The Navy submitted an update to Congress to its annual long-range shipbuilding plans, one that takes a step back from the much-talked-about standard of a 355-ship fleet and instead lays out priorities for a future distributed naval force.
The new document lays out a manned fleet as low as 321 manned ships and potentially as large as 372 manned ships.
A fleet of 321 manned ships would be a departure from past modeling, wargaming and analysis that pointed to a fleet of 355 or more manned ships to counter threats from China and Russia in a future fight. The lower number, though, is more in line with current fiscal constraints and industry capacity. Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Gilday said this week that, “based on the top-line that we have, that we can afford a Navy of about 300 ships” – and there’s not much hope that Navy shipbuilding budgets will increase drastically in the next few years.
(...SNIPPED)

Seeking to justify the Navy’s proposal to decommission the warships, Kilby cited fuel tank leaks that have repeatedly plagued the aging cruisers.

“She missed roughly one-third of the deployment because of maintenance things, not because her radar was down, not because her combat system wasn’t capable, not because she didn’t have a full magazine – but she had tank top cracking that required her to get that fixed to be safely underway,” Kilby told HASC last month, referring to a 2017 deployment for Lake Champlain.

“Vella Gulf missed a month of her previous deployment and has missed two and a half months of her current deployment. So all that, in my mind, has to go into the mix when we factor the availability and reliability of those ships. Those missile tubes will only count if they’re underway alongside the carrier,” he added, referring to Vella Gulf, which had to return to port for the first two months of its recent deployment due to maintenance issues that included fuel tank leaks.

Sea power panel backs block buy of amphibious ships
By: Joe Gould   4 days ago

WASHINGTON ― A House panel on Wednesday advanced a proposal to authorize the Navy to make a block buy of amphibious ships for one more year, meant to save taxpayer dollars, proponents say.

The House Armed Services Committee’s sea power subpanel voted to adopt the plans, part of an amendment from its top Republican, Rep. Rob Wittman of Virginia. As expected, lawmakers also advanced the broader sea power mark for the sweeping fiscal 2022 National Defense Authorization Act.

If passed into law, Wittman’s language would extend authorities from the FY21 NDAA related to a bundled contract for the amphibious assault ship LHA-9 and amphibious transport docks 31, 32 and 33.

“This is all about the amphibious ship bundle, to make sure that [the Office of the Secretary of Defense] continues the effort to purchase these ships,” Wittman said. “We know there’s been a delay by [the Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation office], but I believe it’s incredibly important for this nation to make sure that we exercise the savings, which would be nearly a billion dollars, in buying four ships under this authorization to purchase amphibious ships in this bundle.”
(...SNIPPED)

A US commander says he wants to see a lot more aircraft carriers in the Pacific to check China and Russia

Ryan Pickrell
Fri., December 3, 2021, 8:03 a.m.·4 min read


The USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76) and USS Nimitz (CVN 68) Carrier Strike Groups (CSGs) steam in formation.US Navy

The US Navy recently conducted joint exercises with allies and partners in the Pacific.
The 7th Fleet commander said it was "an incredible amount of power" but added that more was needed for deterrence.
"Four aircraft carriers is a good number, but six, seven or eight would be better," he said.

The commander of the US Navy's 7th Fleet stated recently he would like to see a lot more US and allied aircraft carriers in the Indo-Pacific region to deter rivals China and Russia, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Following a multinational naval exercise in October involving two US aircraft carriers, a British carrier, and a Japanese helicopter carrier, the US Navy linked up with Japan, Australia, Canada, and Germany in November for Pacific drills.
During that most recent exercise, 7th Fleet's Vice Adm. Karl Thomas called the joint force "an incredible amount of power" but noted that more would be better to send a message to potential adversaries that "today is not the day" to start a fight, WSJ reported.
Thinking "about how we might fight, it's a large water space, and four aircraft carriers is a good number, but six, seven or eight would be better," the fleet commander said.

(...SNIPPED)

Navy should be ‘offended’ by its own maintenance and manning faults, admiral says
By Megan Eckstein and Diana Stancy Correll
Wednesday, Jan 12


ARLINGTON, Va. – The Navy should be piqued more easily by the things it’s not doing well, according to the commander of U.S. Fleet Forces Command.

“We need to be offended by not having the right manning. We need to be offended by not getting ships out at the right time,” Adm. Daryl Caudle said at the annual Surface Navy Association conference Jan. 12. “It needs to be palpable, and not just like, ‘Okay,’ and just kind of kick the can down the road.”

(...SNIPPED)

US Navy works to speed up damage assessments, ship repairs
By Megan Eckstein
Thursday, Jan 13

ARLINGTON, Va. — The U.S. Navy is paying more attention to its battle damage assessment and repair capabilities, as it considers what it needs in order to win a war against a sophisticated adversary.
Rear Adm. Eric Ver Hage, the commander of the Navy’s Regional Maintenance Center, said the service went so far as to use the burned-out hull of the former amphibious assault ship Bonhomme Richard to practice this work. The ship caught fire in July 2020 and was decommissioned in April 2021.

(...SNIPPED)