What-If modernized USN reserve/mothballed fleet

[Jeffcsr]

Imagine another Pearl Harbor, or at least a simultaneous sinking of key US ships. Now we're screwed and shorthanded.

What ships do we have sitting in mothballs right now? I can't seem to find any kind of roster but imagine what is still afloat and we'd have to use till new ships were available...

Can someone help out with telling what is still afloat and able to be reactivated in an emergency?

[navydavesof]

Imagine another Pearl Harbor, or at least a simultaneous sinking of key US ships. Now we're screwed and shorthanded.

What ships do we have sitting in mothballs right now? I can't seem to find any kind of roster but imagine what is still afloat and we'd have to use till new ships were available...

Can someone help out with telling what is still afloat and able to be reactivated in an emergency?

Pretty much nothing, man. at the beginning of the 2000s the Navy liquidated almost every combatant in the mothball fleet. There is the Kitty Hawk and Constellation, but those are carriers. It's possible, but those would take a remarkably long time to reactivate, and we would need 60+ aircraft to put on each one. We also have some resupply ships. No combatants (BBs/CA/CG/CGN/DD/DDGs, etc) with the exception of a very few Perry-class FFGs.

It is believed in Congress that the Navy did this in order to corner Congress into buying DDG-1000 and LCS no matter how much they cost. It makes sense to me, because if we still had Spruance-class DDs mothballed, we would be getting them right now and filling the huge ASW gap we have.

[Rick E Davis]

Dave states it pretty well. There are "hulls" sitting around, but they have not really been preserved for future use.

Here is an "Official USN" Naval Vessel Register (NVR) website for poking around to see what there is and where ... http://www.nvr.navy.mil/nvrships/s_b_stat.htm ...

There are some ships in Naval Reserve Training (NRT), older FFGs, and some ships slated for transfer to other countries that likely "could be" be tapped for use. But, the reality is that it would take time to bring any such ship up to full service capability ... except for maybe the NRT units. Ships that have been stricken and not kept in a preserved state, would be in pretty rough shape and even if the hull and power plant are in good shape, would take a LONG overhaul to get functional.

Some of the TICONDEROGA CGs are slated to be decommissioned in the near future. They could be considered for retention.

Any "War" today would be come as you are and don't expect anything "new" unless it was already working up.

The truth about "Mothballed" ships is that even during the Korean War it was learned that it took a lot of effort to get a ship up to current standards for operation with the Fleet. The sensor suites alone were a major driver in when and how "ready" a ship was for service. During the 1950s there was an effort to keep mothballed ships up to some level of Fleet Readiness, mostly in the area of communications and ASW sensors. After about 1960, the USN didn't bother keeping the ships leftover from WWII up to date any longer. The numbers of ships retained to be mothballed after that were far fewer and many times were kept as "Spare Parts" resources for sisters or FMS units.

[oldnavyguy]

Rick pretty much said it. To reactivate a mothballed carrier would take 6 to 12 months, then the new crew would need 6 months or so to be brought up to speed operating it. If the carriers were called up as helicopter carriers the repair and training cycle would be shorter. The mothballed ships have humidity controlled, and all liquids removed, so in theory they are reactivatable. in practice though it would just take too long. The sad fact is we are way short on hulls. The decommissioned aircraft we had were also destroyed, so we could not call them up either. A sad, sad state of affairs. The assumption is, because the current wars are mostly insurgent in nature, all future wars will be as well, so any blue water units are unnecessary. The truth is, when some other nation, or alliance of nations believe they can beat us in major combat at sea, they will do so. Having overwhelming force is a deterance which we are giving up day by day. Other Navies are expanding while we contract.

[Busto963]

Rick pretty much said it. To reactivate a mothballed carrier would take 6 to 12 months, then the new crew would need 6 months or so to be brought up to speed operating it. If the carriers were called up as helicopter carriers the repair and training cycle would be shorter. The mothballed ships have humidity controlled, and all liquids removed, so in theory they are reactivatable. in practice though it would just take too long. The sad fact is we are way short on hulls. The decommissioned aircraft we had were also destroyed, so we could not call them up either. A sad, sad state of affairs. The assumption is, because the current wars are mostly insurgent in nature, all future wars will be as well, so any blue water units are unnecessary. The truth is, when some other nation, or alliance of nations believe they can beat us in major combat at sea, they will do so. Having overwhelming force is a deterance which we are giving up day by day. Other Navies are expanding while we contract.

One thing that is really telling about "mothballed ships" is that when we did have a substantial fleet, the ships were left in salt water ports.

This made sense in that it kept the ships near the shipyards needed to refit them. But from a material preservation standpoint: the Navy should have kept mothballed ships in the great lakes (fresh water). The hulls at least could have been maintained essentially forever with not significant marine growth or corrosion.

As others have said, upgrading sensors and communications would remain problematic.

[Rick E Davis]

A large number of the USN mothballed Warship units were kept rather far inland ... Philadelphia was the best example. The so called Reserve Basin there had been used to "lay-up" ships for just about as long as their has been an USN. Being on a large river, not much salt water would have mixed with the water there. I'm not sure how salty the waters at Boston Navy Yard and Puget Sound Navy Yard were, they certainly could mix with some sea water, but less so than at say at New York. The USN as you say, located mothballed warships at yards and bases where regular maintenance and security could be preformed and when the time arose, reactivate them.

Even the Maritime Reserve Fleets were kept up rivers for the most part.

You have to remember that much of the Great Lakes were not accessible to the ocean for large ships until the 1950s. And treaties with Canada prohibited basing warships there in any numbers.

[navydavesof]

IF, IF, IF...

You would have at your disposal, 3-6 Batimore, 2-4Oregeon-class, 3 Albany-class CAs, 10 Leahy/Belknap-class CGs, 4 Kidd-class DDGs, 4 Ticonderoga-class CGs and 20 Gearing-class DDs.

....if...

[Bill Liebold]

Would any of the museum ships be of any use? There are the battle ships as well as ships like Salem and Little Rock. Are they mostly too far gone?

Bill

[Jeffcsr]

Well that pretty much sucks since we have so many challengers/and or enemies on the Pacific it's a shame we don't have a larger fleet.

do the SSGNs have the ability to strike ships with their Tomahawks or would they require a different version missle? Im just assuming they're loaded out for land strikes and not anti ship. They would be a great asset to balance out a sea battle if our surface fleet took a major hit.

[Cliffy B]

They would need TASMs to strike ships and I don't think those are in the inventory anymore and haven't been for quite some time. At least in the active inventory, maybe some in storage. I want to say they were converted to TLAMs but can't remember. They weren't that accurate either as they were designed to hit Soviets sailing in groups in open ocean, not single ships in congested waterways. They had a tendency to lock onto the first target they came across and then that ship whether it be Kirov or some poor merchie would eat all of that had been shot. That's what I've heard anyway.

[navydavesof]

Lockheed is finishing up its future ASCM using the Tomahawk air frame. It will be super sonic and have around a 300nm range. The Navy says it will be procuring them in a couple of years. In the meantime, however they are back fitting some existing TLAMs ("E" variant) into TASMs. This is only a very few, probably only 100, and I think they are the Mk14 canister (surface ship) types. They're doing it, because our operational Harpoon stock is getting very, very, very low.

[navydavesof]

Would any of the museum ships be of any use? There are the battle ships as well as ships like Salem and Little Rock. Are they mostly too far gone?

Bill

Hey, Bill! I think most of them would be of use. They would have to receive some modernizations, but I think both Salem and Little Rock would be great. I think one of the issues is that a lot of the ships we have at our disposal are capital ships. I believe Little Rock has a significant flagship capability, too. Unfortunately we don't have a stock of escort ships like Belknap-class or Spruance-class ships to draw from.

[SebastianP]

Would any of the museum ships be of any use? There are the battle ships as well as ships like Salem and Little Rock. Are they mostly too far gone?

Bill

Hey, Bill! I think most of them would be of use. They would have to receive some modernizations, but I think both Salem and Little Rock would be great. I think one of the issues is that a lot of the ships we have at our disposal are capital ships. I believe Little Rock has a significant flagship capability, too. Unfortunately we don't have a stock of escort ships like Belknap-class or Spruance-class ships to draw from.

Reactivating the museum ships is completely impractical - the Navy no longer operates any of their weapons or powerplants, and they'd need so much expensive systems replacements in order to operate with modern units it would be cheaper to buy new ships. And they require enormous crews compared to modern warships.

(Also, many of their names have been re-used - for example, there's a new USS Missouri now...)

[navydavesof]

Well...the names don't matter. The weapons systems are what matter. You would just have a "Battleship Missouri" and an "SSN Missouri". The Navy still operates quite a few boiler driven ships, so that's no problem. The US Navy spent 10 years making nearly 10,000 new battleship sailors. There is an enormous list of battleship sailors who are on a recall list in order to teach a new wave of crews how to operate the 16" guns. The USS Newport News association would be more than happy to teach new sailors how to operate her Mk16 8" guns. As was illustrated with the Iowas in the 1980s, fitting older ships with modern electronics is a nonproblem. Even at a casual pace, it does not take very long. As was scheduled for the early 1990s, replacing some weapons (5"/38 guns) with modern weapons (Mk45 5") and fitting the super structure with large numbers of Mk41 VLS is, again very feasible. Even replacing North Carolina's undoubtedly rust damaged hull shell would not be a problem.

By they way, North Carolina was supposed to be towed up to Norfolk Naval Shipyard to have her hull repaired to the extent necessary in 2006. She is so stuck in the mud that the Navy may indeed reclaim the ship and pull her from the mud itself.

[oldnavyguy]

An interesting thread. If we assume the reactivation is in attempt to increase the number of hulls, and we are not responding to an emergency, like what Pr. Reagan did, it could be done. As was pointed out above, the boiler plants are not really supported anymore. Yes we do have gaters that use boilers, and personnel that know how to run them but a boiler plant is more than just a boiler. We would have to upgrade all the pumps, for instance because the existing ones have no parts available anymore. Believe me, every pump would need replacing and that is allot of pumps. Missile laubchers and often guns would have to be replaced because of no parts support. When I served on USS Long Beach we broke a breach block on one of the guns and had to get a replacement from a musium ship. Of course I would keep the big guns, but 5" 38's? They would have to go. We could probably get them up fully up to speed for a cost of three musium ships for the cost of two new ones. Does that sound like a deal?If all we want is a maximum of hulls for a minimum of cost we could probably manage it at 3/1 or 4/1, but those vessels would not be very reliable or effective, with the exception of the Iowa's, and maybe the Salem and Little Rock. There are alot of Destroyer musiums around like the Turner Joy in Bremerton. It would be expensive, and difficult to bring the Turner Joy back to standard but it could be done.

By the way, the estuary in Bremerton is in the Puget Soundwhich is all salt water. Sure some rivers dump in, but it is salt.

[anj4de]

IF, IF, IF...

You would have at your disposal, 3-6 Batimore, 2-4Oregeon-class, 3 Albany-class CAs, 10 Leahy/Belknap-class CGs, 4 Kidd-class DDGs, 4 Ticonderoga-class CGs and 20 Gearing-class DDs.

....if...

20 Gearing-class DDs...wow! That is a surprise to me. I would have never thought the Navy of 2013/14 would still have those in moth balls...Where are those now, are there any recent pictures of them? The Gearing class are the best looking destroyers made...I like then very much!

thanks
Uwe

[navydavesof]

20 Gearing-class DDs...wow! That is a surprise to me. I would have never thought the Navy of 2013/14 would still have those in moth balls...Where are those now, are there any recent pictures of them? The Gearing class are the best looking destroyers made...I like then very much!

Uwe, no we don't. That's why I said, "If...If...If..." If we had those things, the current Navy could use them very well. Exept for 2 CGs, our mothball fleet has none of those items I listed. The USN's mothball fleet is almost completely devoid of combatants. Literally, nothing is left.

[OS1880]

I just received a letter urging me to contact my representative in congress and the senate to support the Naval Vessel Transfer act. It states in a nut shell that they want to sell 8 recently decommissioned FFG's to Mexico and Thailand
My questions is were these vessels in that bad of shape that they needed to go. With all the talk of increasing the fleet with new construction wouldn't it be wiser to keep these combatants until that comes to pass. Having something saved for a rainy day is better than nothing. Just my opinion.

[navydavesof]

I just received a letter urging me to contact my representative in congress and the senate to support the Naval Vessel Transfer act. It states in a nut shell that they want to sell 8 recently decommissioned FFG's to Mexico and Thailand
My questions is were these vessels in that bad of shape that they needed to go. With all the talk of increasing the fleet with new construction wouldn't it be wiser to keep these combatants until that comes to pass. Having something saved for a rainy day is better than nothing. Just my opinion.

Fascinating!!!

Yes, but the USN won't do it. The upper chain in the USN is a pile of sissies. They are focused on new construction, so we won't ever see FFGs reactivated, unfortunately. The sales should NOT happen. We should reactivate them ourselves. It is NOT our job to sell our Navy to other countries. F@*K them. We need our Navy. Let them build their own Navy. Let them run the Gearings longer....

[OS1880]

Navydave my sentiments exactly, and it is also stated in the bill that this would be a grant, to me that means we are paying to give them these ships and we will probably put them through an overhaul, this is supposed to be a money saving proposition ...yea right. Check out H.R. 3470 and S.1683 The Naval Vessel Transfer Act.