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PostPosted: Wed Jun 06, 2018 8:56 am 
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And the gross federal debt exploded under Reagan, it was clearly not a sustainable politics, which was rescued by the timely collapse of the Soviet Union.

The debt was considered preferable to war with the Soviet Union, which was a strong possibility at the time. The spending paid off, the Soviet Union collapsed and the military threat was greatly reduced for a time. Money well spent.

I served during the Reagan years on a ship which was reactivated from the mothball fleet - the USS Missouri (BB 63). We were told that the Phase I reactivation of the BBs was being completed for ~$400 million, which was the cost of a new build Perry. Again, money well spent.

So you see, there is some empirical support for modernizing and reactivating reserve ships when the mission requires it. If you consider time or money as factors it becomes a very attractive part of the total solution.

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PostPosted: Wed Jun 06, 2018 9:32 am 
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InchHigh wrote:
And the gross federal debt exploded under Reagan, it was clearly not a sustainable politics, which was rescued by the timely collapse of the Soviet Union.

The debt was considered preferable to war with the Soviet Union, which was a strong possibility at the time. The spending paid off, the Soviet Union collapsed and the military threat was greatly reduced for a time. Money well spent.


100% agree. I'll take debt over death any day.

InchHigh wrote:
I served during the Reagan years on a ship which was reactivated from the mothball fleet - the USS Missouri (BB 63). We were told that the Phase I reactivation of the BBs was being completed for ~$400 million, which was the cost of a new build Perry. Again, money well spent.

So you see, there is some empirical support for modernizing and reactivating reserve ships when the mission requires it. If you consider time or money as factors it becomes a very attractive part of the total solution.


BBs were a perfect example of when it should be done - to gain a capability you could not otherwise have achieved in less than 10 years (design, build...add politics to that and you may be at 15-20 years to get something like that built).

I had orders to Whiskey before they got changed to language school.

Lehman also took a look at some Essex class, and the condition was far to poor. The BBs were put up in good condition and maintained in good condition - neither of which are true of any of the Perry's once decommissioned.

Perry's are a good design, always did more than what was asked of them. But honestly I think you could build a new modified Perry if you needed immediate hulls and get better bang for your buck considering the conditions they were in on decom. Delayed maint, low priority for parts, etc.

For smaller vessels, new is the better way to go.


So after catch up on the current fleet (fully trained and manned ships, catch up all maint items), and building new Frigates to get the numbers and capabilities we need, we need a replacement for the CGs.

That's how we get to an effective fleet.

The money, personnel, and repair yard capacity to bring back Perry's is better spent on the current active fleet and new hulls.

Everyone has an opinion, and that is mine based on experience across US and RN ships from PC to Frigate to Destroyer to CG and CGNs.


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PostPosted: Wed Jun 06, 2018 12:02 pm 
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Fascinating! I wrote mainly about the topic here, especially the recent topic newly built ships vs. updating old ones, and there are mainly comment so small side remark. Interesting!

Again to the topic:
there is no evidence that the fleet expansion under Reagan was done to any significant extent by modernisation of old ships or even by keeping old ships longer in service. There is 600 ship fleet - and the only mentioned examples are now 4 of them. Regarding to the number of ships completely insignificant, regarding operational costs probably somehow significant. Another example for a modernisation would be Midway - which is apparently an interesting example for a failed modernisation.

For numbers more relevant were escorts. The oldest ships, e.g. the Forrest Sherman class, were decommissioned by the Reagan administration. Are there any evidence that other old ships, which had reached the end of their service lives around 1990, were modernised under Reagan to prevent them to become obsolete? E.g. the Farragut/Coontz class (except of using Mahan as test ship)? Or the Charles F. Adams class? Any of those included in the New Threat Upgrade (NTU) program? Or only newer ships? In contrast, these ships were replaced by new ships, the Arleigh Burke class... Several newer classes were modernised, i.e. ships, which were 20 years old or even younger. The most obsolete ones were not at the top of the priority list, indicating that life extension of soon too old ships was not a topic.


And regarding the favourite new topic of some here: these are the facts my statement was based on:

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https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:USdebt.svg

Especially the second graph (percentage of the GDP) is interesting. For sure Reagan was not the only one making a lot of debts, the reaction to the 2008 crisis would be another example.

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PostPosted: Wed Jun 06, 2018 2:29 pm 
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Last edited by carr on Wed Jul 11, 2018 12:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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PostPosted: Thu Jun 07, 2018 2:14 pm 
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Relevant to this thread because this affects carrier numbers:

Daily Press/Military.com

Quote:
House Wants to Consider Extending Life of Oldest Aircraft Carrier

Daily Press (Newport News, Va.) 7 Jun 2018 By Hugh Lessig

To help expand its fleet of aircraft carriers, the Navy could purchase two ships at once. That's on the table right now.

It could also coax more life from its oldest carrier. That's also under consideration, thanks to the House-passed 2019 defense spending blueprint.

A provision in the House's 2019 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) directs the Navy to consider extending the service life of the USS Nimitz, built at Newport News Shipbuilding and commissioned in 1975.

It tells Navy Secretary Richard V. Spencer to brief the House Armed Services Committee no later than March 1, 2019, "on options that exist to extend the service life of USS Nimitz, to include the extension of major components," according to the bill's text. "Additionally, such a briefing should include cost estimates and major modernization components."

(...SNIPPED)

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PostPosted: Thu Jun 07, 2018 2:36 pm 
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@ carr:

1.) You keep on discussing side remarks instead of the main topic.

2.) If you want facts instead of opinions, then check what you self are doing.

You wrote three times that you would look at the facts instead of "unsubstantiated statements".

a) Instead of showing data regarding the operational costs, you showed life cycle costs. This is clearly not the same! Regarding the actual operational costs you also only had guesses based on the Navy's estimates and your assumptions. There is no indication that even the Navy has solid data, there is no LCS with fully functional modules in service. It would have been much more honest to declare your opinion to be an opinion - as I had done regarding the operational costs of the LCS compared to the OHPs.

b) In order to claim that it would be cheaper to update the OHP class, you compared apples with oranges. You compared guesses regarding the coasts for activating and modernizing the OHPs with the costs of a new Arleigh Burke - obviously a comparison of cheap escort with a much more sophisticated destroyer. It is obvious that in this case it is likely that the destroyer would be more expensive. This was your answer to a discussion about much cheaper frigate designs and you apple/orange comparison was clearly intentional to support you opinion. Again not a very honest way to discuss things.

c) The Wikipedia data clearly show a massive increase in debts during the Reagan time and a clear change of trend regarding percentage of the GDP. This are the facts themselves - no interpretation. You showed some data without any references, data covering different time frames (therefore difficult to compare!) and also your data shows not an constant increase of debts, but an acceleration: the debts increase by the factor 1.12 per year between 1970-1977 and 1.10 1977-1981. 1981-1985 it increased by the factor 1.21 and 1985-89 by the factor 1.14.

Therefore three times a very arrogant statement by you and two times facts not fitting to the topic and one time ignoring your own facts.

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PostPosted: Thu Jun 07, 2018 4:06 pm 
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Last edited by carr on Wed Jul 11, 2018 12:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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PostPosted: Thu Jun 07, 2018 5:03 pm 
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And speaking of extending warships' service lives:

Defense News

Quote:
The US Navy’s fleet is getting old. It might get a lot older.
By: David B. Larter   2 hours ago

The U.S. Navy is considering extending the service life of all its ships by at least seven years, and could stretch the life of some ships by 13 years, according to an internal document produced by Naval Sea Systems Command.

The analysis, first obtained by the military blog CDR Salamander, shows that as part of the Navy’s effort to grow the fleet to 355 ships, the service is eyeing extending the lives of the non-nuclear surface ships in the fleet. It also means some active ships could be as much as 53 years old.

The letter, which qualifies that the extended service lives are contingent on following class maintenance plans, proposes extending the early Arleigh Burke destroyers to 45 years and the Flight IIAs to between 46 and 50 years. It also proposes cruisers could be extended to between 42 and 52 years; littoral combat ships to between 32 and 35 years, up from 25 years; and the amphibious assault ships to as long as 53 years.


(...SNIPPED)

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PostPosted: Fri Jun 08, 2018 1:25 pm 
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Those proposed age numbers are pretty high in general, and may not be so easy to achieve after lack of maintenance and insufficient training since 2011.


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PostPosted: Sat Jun 09, 2018 10:37 pm 
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A summary of a GAO report:

Defense Aerospace

Quote:
Navy Shipbuilding: Past Performance Provides Valuable Lessons for Future Investments
(Source: US Government Accountability Office; issued June 06, 2018)
The [US] Navy set a goal in 2007 for a fleet of 330 ships. Since then, the Navy has:
--fallen 50 ships short,
--gone $11 billion over budget,
--experienced many years of schedule delays,
--delivered ships with less capability and lower quality than expected.


These poor outcomes persist because policy and processes enable the Navy to deviate from shipbuilding best practices.

(...SNIPPED)

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PostPosted: Sun Jun 10, 2018 3:42 am 
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It seems that the figure of 355 ships is a goal to which all other considerations are to be sacrificed. If it cannot be done effectively then it should not be done at all. Keeping the US Navy at present force levels might not be the ideal, but bringing retired hulls back into service and stretching the lifespan of current hulls is like getting into massive debt. One day it will catch up with them and suddenly a lot of warships have to be withdrawn over 5 to ten years (maybe less) because they are past it. Then force levels take a nosedive and US influence and prestige is similarly affected.

Remember one thing, presidents come and go. They are not necessarily interested in anything but their time in office, any issues they leave behind are someone else's problem.

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PostPosted: Mon Jun 11, 2018 12:40 am 
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If they do this kind of life extension, they convert the US Navy into a fleet of museum ships (similar to parts of the Air Force). That may be not a problem in wars against countries with nearly no existing modern defence (e.g. Afghanistan or Iraq in 2003), but for sure not a credible defence against countries with a much more modern armament (e.g. China). And as Admiral John Byng has written for sure also the ships with the life extension has to be replaced and they will have to be replaced much sooner than newly built ships.

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PostPosted: Mon Jun 11, 2018 1:40 pm 
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It requires that now money and yard capacity is both spend for new ships and updating older ones - and that could delay the building of new ships.

By the way: is there any historical example that a fleet was EXPANDED by keeping already old ships (> 30 years and older) longer in service? And thereby accepting that a significant part of the ships was obsolete? Which navy ever did that?

For sure there are plenty of examples that ships were updated after 10-20 years service. And for sure there are examples of a few aircraft carriers and the Iowa class. But in way described in the article? That really every major surface warships should serve longer?

For me it appears to be strategy designed to burn money - and perhaps for keeping repair yards busy.

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PostPosted: Mon Jun 11, 2018 2:32 pm 
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How old were these ships when they were modernised? The Queen Elizabeth class was c. 10 and 20 years, respectively, at the time of conversions. The surviving ships were decommissioned after 28-34 years.

When was it decided to keep the New York and Arkansas (Wyoming) class? They were only 27-29 years old, when the war started for the USA. For sure they were kept after the Second World War started, but they were all decommissioned after 32-34 years of service.

That is all not even near to age range discussed above ;)

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PostPosted: Tue Jun 12, 2018 12:17 pm 
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DavidP wrote:
British royal navy with the updated QE class battleships like Queen Elizabeth, Valiant & Warspite. also the usn when Arkansas & the New York class was to be replaced by new builds like the North Carolina & South Dakota classes but instead where kept for war use.


All decisions on Battleships from 1920-1941 were based on the limits imposed by the Washington Naval treaty and its follow-up treaties.

That was the primary driver for retention, those ships could not be replaced without violating treaties.

"A ten-year pause or "Green Day" of the construction of capital ships (battleships and battlecruisers), including the immediate suspension of all building of capital ships.
The scrapping of existing or planned capital ships to give a 5:5:3:1.75:1.75 ratio of tonnage with respect to Britain, the United States, Japan, France and Italy respectively.
Ongoing limits of both capital ship tonnage and the tonnage of secondary vessels with the 5:5:3 ratio"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Naval_Treaty

So new builds were delayed until treaty allowed, and by the time that happened, everything that could be retained was retained due to war going hot.

The North Carolina and South Dakota classes were never intended to replace the Arkansas and New York classes


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PostPosted: Thu Jun 28, 2018 10:58 pm 
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Key excerpts below: sub numbers are also very much on the US Congressmen's minds.

Defense News

Quote:
House sinks submarine proposal, OKs Pentagon spending bill with dual-carrier buy
By: Joe Gould   10 hours ago
WASHINGTON — The House on Thursday passed its chamber’s version of the annual defense appropriations bill with a plans to buy two aircraft carriers at a time but without a proposal to buy two more submarines.

In a 359-49 vote, House members approved a $675 billion Defense Department appropriations bill that would fund 93 F-35 fighter jets (four more than Senate appropriators are seeking), three littoral combat ships (to the Senate’s two) and the Advanced Battle Management System, which would replace the JSTARS recapitalization plan that the U.S. Air Force wants to kill.


(...SNIPPED)

“The Chinese in 2020 will have 70 submarines. They are building them at a rate of six per year,” Wittman said. “Are we willing to tell our children and grandchildren, when we had a chance to do something, that we did not act?”

(...SNIPPED)


House Seapower Subcommittee Chairman Rob Wittman, R-Va., and ranking member Joe Courtney, D-Conn., successfully included an amendment to enable a dual buy of the aircraft carriers CVN-80 and CVN-81, a move they said could save as much as $2.5 billion in construction costs and would not add new expenses next year.

“Allowing us to buy two aircraft carriers at a time helps us with efficiency, it helps us reduce cost, it gets the aircraft carriers that we need — and it has widespread support,” Wittman told the rules panel on Tuesday.

House Appropriations Committee ranking member Pete Visclosky, D-Ind., did not oppose the two-carrier amendment but cautioned that the ships’ cost — $10 billion each — could create problems with budget caps still in place.

“To imply we are weak-kneed and not spending adequately on shipbuilding is not true,” said Visclosky, arguing that the overall bill adds $837 million to the president’s shipbuilding budget request of more than $21 billion.

Those warnings hung over the next amendment from Courtney and Wittman, which would have added $1.7 billion to fund long-lead materials to build three Virginia-class submarines per year starting in 2022. (The amendment died in a floor vote on Thursday, 167-244.)

Courtney and Wittman’s states are home to the shipyards that would build the submarines: General Dynamics Electric Boat in Groton, Connecticut, and Huntington Ingalls in Newport News, Virginia. But they argued the move was meant to help the Navy better negotiate a larger block buy of submarines and mitigate a decline in the fleet size.

The attack submarine fleet is expected to reach 42 boats in a decade, one-third less than the Navy force-structure assessment prescribes.

“Subs are aging out faster than the two-per-year build rate can replace,” Courtney said.

(...SNIPPED)


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PostPosted: Thu Jul 12, 2018 11:56 pm 
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3 belated articles of interest:

Military.com

Quote:
New Steel Tariffs Not Derailing Plans for 355-Ship Navy Yet: Admiral
11 Jul 2018 By Gina Harkins

The Navy has seen minor cost jumps following the president's move to place steep tariffs on steel imports, but leaders aren't immediately concerned they'll derail plans to build toward a 355-ship fleet.

"It's something we need to be mindful of, but it's not something [that's] a big driver in current negotiations," Rear Adm. William Galinis, the head of the Navy’s Program Executive Office Ships, said at a Navy League event outside Washington, D.C., on Wednesday.

Some industry partners have expressed concerns about the tariffs affecting shipbuilding prices, Galinis said, but the change hasn't led to massive cost spikes.

"I think we're seeing some price increases, but ... we're not seeing a big change, at least at this point," he said.

(...SNIPPED)


US Naval Institute

Quote:
Report to Congress on U.S. Navy Destroyer Programs
July 11, 2018 7:48 AM

The following is the July 3, 2018 Congressional Research Service report, Navy DDG-51 and DDG-1000 Destroyer Programs: Background and Issues for Congress.
From the report:

This report presents background information and potential oversight issues for Congress on the Navy’s Arleigh Burke (DDG-51) and Zumwalt (DDG-1000) class destroyer programs. The Navy procured DDG-51s from FY1985 through FY2005, and resumed procuring them in FY2010. The three DDG-51s requested for procurement in FY2019 are to be the 80th, 81st, and 82nd ships in the class. The Navy procured three DDG-1000s in FY2007-FY2009 and plans no further procurement of DDG-1000s.

(...SNIPPED)


Breaking Defense

Quote:
Destroyers Maxed Out, Navy Looks To New Hulls: Power For Radars & Lasers
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. on July 11, 2018 at 4:15 PM

ARLINGTON: The Navy has crammed as much electronics as it can into its new DDG-51 Flight III destroyers now beginning construction, Rear Adm. William Galinis said this morning. That drives the service towards a new Large Surface Combatant that can comfortably accommodate the same high-powered radars, as well as future weapons such as lasers, on either a modified DDG-51 hull or an entirely new design.

“It’s going to be more of an evolutionary approach as we migrate from the DDG-51 Flight IIIs to the Large Surface Combatant,” said Galinis, the Navy’s Program Executive Officer for Ships. (LSC evolved from the Future Surface Combatant concept and will serve along a new frigate and unmanned surface vessels). “(We) start with a DDG-51 flight III combat system and we build off of that, probably bringing in a new HME (Hull, Mechanical, & Engineering) infrastructure, a new power architecture, to support that system as it then evolves going forward.”

(...SNIPPED)

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PostPosted: Fri Jul 13, 2018 6:16 pm 
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Man, oh, man. Talk about wetting the chops. A modern CGBL would be an excellent and wonderful project :heh:

I bet you can imagine, I will gravitate toward all my most recent revisions and refined ideas about armament and hull type. Mk71 8"/62caliber guns, Mk41 VLS, RAM and SeaRAM, Millennium Guns, stern boat deck, Atlanta/Cleveland style armor modelled to reduce the effects of missiles and torpedoes...

…but a modern BB hull (at least) first! :woo_hoo:

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PostPosted: Sat Jul 14, 2018 9:24 am 
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I think the USN should decide whether they want more destroyers or a new design, I doubt that both will be viable. Although it seems like an evolutionary approach to an improved/enlarged Arleigh Burke, I suspect that so many factors will require tweaking that a whole new ship will be the result.

As we saw with the Zumwalt, it quickly gets out of control and a much larger and more expensive vessel is born.

Perhaps rather than aiming at a new destroyer, a new cruiser design should be the focus of getting this laser weapon to sea?

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PostPosted: Sat Jul 14, 2018 12:35 pm 
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Defense News

Quote:
US Navy’s surface ship program head confident on meeting 355-ship goal
By: Andrew C. Jarocki   22 hours ago

WASHINGTON — The head of the U.S. Navy’s surface ship program office says the service will be able to meet the goal of a 355-ship fleet.

Rear Adm. William Galinis told industry representatives at a Navy League breakfast Wednesday that congressional investment in shipbuilding and the service life extension of aging vessels will allow the Navy to meet the target.

Congress has been “very generous to the Navy, and to shipbuilding in particular” he said. Galinis noted $100 billion worth of shipbuilding work across different program offices, with 35 ships currently in construction or on contract.
(...SNIPPED)

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