The Ship Model Forum

A return to Reagan-era force levels?

Naval Today



Trump returning the USN to the level not seen since the Reagan years?

Navy Times

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"Haijun" means "navy" in Mandarin Chinese.

"You have enemies? Good. It means you stood up for something in your life."- Winston Churchill

Looks like the battleships are coming back.

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Thomas E. Johnson

http://www.youtube.com/user/ThomasEJohnson

Perhaps Trump should have made Bannon SECNAV instead of his last job, since Bannon at least served as a USN officer during the Carter years.

Defense News

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"Haijun" means "navy" in Mandarin Chinese.

"You have enemies? Good. It means you stood up for something in your life."- Winston Churchill

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"Haijun" means "navy" in Mandarin Chinese.

"You have enemies? Good. It means you stood up for something in your life."- Winston Churchill

Republican lawmakers set to introduce legislation calling for a 355-ship Navy

Defense News - June 21, 2017

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"Haijun" means "navy" in Mandarin Chinese.

"You have enemies? Good. It means you stood up for something in your life."- Winston Churchill

If they can keep from colliding with container ships!

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"Haijun" means "navy" in Mandarin Chinese.

"You have enemies? Good. It means you stood up for something in your life."- Winston Churchill

I am looking at a few proposals to reach the 355 ship goal with the most cheap and easy means possible. This means building new ships and reactivating and modernizing deactivated ships.

The topic for today is reacquiring the Kidd-class DDGs from Taiwan. One of the best things the USN could do is to reacquire the Kidd-class DDGs from the Taiwanese as they replace them with KDX-III DDGs. We could easily perform the Tico HM&E upgrade, replace the forward 5" with a Mk71 8"/60caliber gun, the forward Mk26 launcher with a 32-cell Mk41 VLS launcher and the aft Mk26 launcher with 64-cell Mk41 VLS tubes, Phalanx block 1B and 2 RAM launchers while keeping the Aegis upgraded Tartar-D system already on board the ship. Replacing the SPQ-9A with the SPQ-9B would greatly enhance the ship's ability to control it's gunfire but also to detect and engage sea-skimming missiles. As modified, these ships would be able to escort amphibs and perform reliable NGFS/naval gunnery strike with guided munitions that can reach to 65nm and attack targets 1000 miles inland with TLAMs. She could carry 2 HH-60s and 12-16 Shadow and ScanEagle UAVs for ISR and gunfire spotting. If the Navy were to be smart...that is a pretty big stretch.

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Proper Preparation Prevents Poor Performance

Hey, Dave! Awesome to hear from you, mate!!!

The Kidds a in very good condition. The Taiwanese have maintained them very well. They don't want to decommission them due to use but instead due to arrival of a superior replacement.

Even if they were in poor condition we could service them up to requirements and put them to sea. If such a modernization were to be called for, all of those concerns would be resolved as well.

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Proper Preparation Prevents Poor Performance

If we accept the RAND conclusion that the majority of a warship's cost comes from their systems rather than the hull, I don't see how replacing those systems with new equipment is any cheaper in the long run once you include the decreased lifespan post-recommissioning (how much life is left?0, and the accompanying need to build a new replacement at the end of that period.

Unless you plan on just rebuying and refitting old ships every few years? Otherwise your fleet number will have to decrease after a few years or you build a new ship. If you're going to have to do the latter, might as well do it now on a hull that'll be good for the next 30-40 years.

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De quoi s'agit-il?

Doing things on the cheap is rarely successful. The magic 355 might be obtained by building groups of ships that are moderately capable of performing one mission (ASW, AAW ASuW, etc.) with very few self defence systems.

In my opinion this is not worth doing as each ship would be fairly vulnerable and would have limited ability to respond to developing threat scenarios. But given the size of the US fleet it might not matter too much as they would be accompanied by other warships which hopefully could deal with the other types of threat.

As Timmy says new hulls are more useful/cost effective than old.

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In 1757 Admiral John Byng was shot "pour encourager les autres". Voltaire

No, it would be a modernization of the existing hull. As Carr has recently posted on his blog, the hull is actually a bigger part of the ship's cost than we originally thought. With the precision the Taiwanese have maintained these ships, we would benefit greatly from getting them back.

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Proper Preparation Prevents Poor Performance

NavyDaveSof,

Please note an older thread on this very same topic in the History and Technology section.

EDITED TO ADD: THANKS TO THE MODERATORS FOR THE THREAD MERGE!

I doubt that Taiwan would be willing to part with their Kidd class DDGs unless you offer them something with comparable or better capability. What makes you so sure they will get the KDX-III destroyers from South Korea when even that country won't sell to Taiwan since they're wary of endangering trade relations with mainland China?

Or finally give Taiwan the diesel subs they want despite what your State department says about how doing so will upset mainland China. Yes I'm aware that the Kidds are more AAW-focused than ASuw/ASW, but subs are what Taiwan needs the most.

They're considering building the diesel subs on their own; selling them US-made diesel subs or perhaps expediting the purchase of Soryu class subs from Japan will significantly boost their capabilities.

Popular Mechanics article

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"Haijun" means "navy" in Mandarin Chinese.

"You have enemies? Good. It means you stood up for something in your life."- Winston Churchill

In regards to Taiwan, aren't they still operating a WWII era Tench class sub?

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"A ship is always referred to as she because it costs so much to keep one in paint and powder” - Chester W. Nimitz

In the yard:

Slip 1 - IJN Yahagi (1/350) - building
Slip 2 - IJN Amagi (Battle cruiser) (1/700) - building

They're operating 4 subs. Two of them are upgraded "Guppy"/Tench/Balao class still being used for training.

The other two are Dutch-made Walrus class diesel subs made in the 1980s which are used for frontline duties. These 4 subs and the ROCN/Taiwanese surface fleet are still outnumbered by the China's 60+ subs (diesel and nuclear) and an expanding surface fleet that now includes 2 carriers.

Taiwan's better quality in military equipment and training won't cancel out China's quantitative advantage forever; with one of the world's largest economies, it's only a matter of time before China can outspend their Taiwanese cousins when it comes to technological advances and make the qualitative advantage irrelevant.

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"Haijun" means "navy" in Mandarin Chinese.

"You have enemies? Good. It means you stood up for something in your life."- Winston Churchill

I would think that the Chinese navy already has qualitatively better ships than the Taiwanese navy - e.g. a Type 052D compared e.g. to an old Kidd class, I would think that the Type 052D is much better, has more advanced radars etc.

The Kidd class were built in 1978-82 - an very outdated, expensive to operate design. Most ships from that period in major navies are already out of commission. There were two navies, which refused to get the Kidd class after they were decommissioned by the US Navy: the Australian and Greek one. I am sure they had very good reasons to do so.

A bigger fleet can be only be only be afforded if cheaper ships, which are cheaper to operate, are bought - i.e. ships perhaps even cheaper than LCS... The USN appears to have today very similar problems than the Royal Navy after its peak of its might.

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They would be modernized and manned like the Ticonderoga-class CGs. Manning would be cut by approximately 20% through automation. The Ticonderoga-class HM&E upgrade would allow them another 20 years of service.

To a point, yes. The 600 ship fleet was built by mass producing the Perry FFGs, reactivating the battleships, buying more CVNs, building a larger amphibious fleet, and maintaining the current fleet. That is all pretty expensive work...except for the battleships. They were really cheap purchases. For the price of a Perry FFG we brought them back, and if we went through with the modernizations in 1993 as was planned, we would have had VLS capable BBs for 1.5 the cost of an FFG.

Today, if we underwent a similar fleet rebuild, we could have a large number of new ships and reactivated old ones. Yes manning would be increased, but we also need the ships fast, and those are the ships we need.

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Proper Preparation Prevents Poor Performance

The Ticonderoga class is another outdated design, which is expensive to operate and the Congress (as far as I remember) forces the Navy to continue to operate them. The Navy probably prefers them to be decommissioned and replaced. To add systems to reduce manning by 20% is for sure an expensive modernisation, especially, if a 40 year old design should be modernised.


But the battleships were very, very expensive to operate - that was also the reason why they were so rapidly decommissioned. It would have been very expensive to bring them to modern standards - and then they would be still expensive to operate.

The USN would need something similar to the cheap Perry class frigates, but for sure at today's standards - or change its strategy to require less ships (if more ships are needed anyway and not only for bragging).

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Among those expenses was the requirement for a large crew: the 1980s Iowa class still had large crews even if they were slightly smaller than their WW2-era crew complements.

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"Haijun" means "navy" in Mandarin Chinese.

"You have enemies? Good. It means you stood up for something in your life."- Winston Churchill

Hey, mate!

Ah, I did not realize that! Thanks much.

355 ships (USN force level goal under Trump)

One of my coworkers recently spent 6 months aboard a KDXIII with the South Koreans, and they claim they have a deal with the Taiwanese to build 4 ships and to license the design for domestic construction.

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Proper Preparation Prevents Poor Performance