NAVY NEWS
Comments (7)
The U.S. Navy has had a budget, construction, and scheduling problem for decades, and congress until recently did not even acknowledge the shortage. Now we have improvements/increases in construction capability at the two submarine construction yards, with promises of increased production rates where force levels will not fall futher behind. The submarine force cannot even meet current curtailed Unified Combatant Commander force requirements . . . and the Navy is considering reducing that further??? When a submarine submerges . . . it could be anywhere. Not so with a surface vessel. We need our submarines.
Curtis Conway at 6:30 PMThe 66 submarine goal was already dangerously low compared to the numbers of submarines the Russiand and Chinese are fielding. Now they consider even 50 to be out of reach? You might as well give up Asia then because China cannot be deterred with less than 50 submarines.
DD at 8:45 AMContinuous Process Improvement (CPI) techniques need to be applied across every Congressionally funded program. There is waste to be found. Cost avoidance and application of system engineering methodologies should help in reducing risks to replacing aging weapon systems that are still performing beyond their original design life. However, caution must be exercised when pushing the limits of life extension and increasing failure rates.
John Kallenberger at 3:21 PM
This discussion shouldn't be shaped by our current industrial capacity; in the long run, that will lead us to ruin. Funding always matters so we need to match available and projected resources to a defined strategy and then build a number/mix of ships (of all types) that will enable the USN to execute that strategy. Rather than trying to achieve a number influenced by near-term constraints, we should take a longer view…industrial capacity will follow!
The bottom line is...how much does it cost, and how complex does the USA have to get to kill or sink something? That essentially is the gist of it all.
The peer nation could drop thousands of depth charges from planes or launch TBMs into the oceans to "Explode the waters" of any and all underwater subs (and all Marine life in the shockwaves). That is an extreme unconventional ASW tactic on the cheap. Again, how much and how High-Tech does it have to be and get to sink something? And then decide on how long it will take to build these subs.
Granted, the Pentagon has had a stellar run of top-performing expensive High-Tech submarines over the decades...kudos.
"We don't have the industrial base to do that."
That's why you build the damn thing instead of giving up.
I think it's more about money than anything else. We cannot pay for the industrial base. In the end, to get through the terrible '20's we will probably stick with 2 subs per year. The fly in the ointment is, that includes the 12 Columbia subs. Meaning we will drop to 42 subs and flounder around the low to mid 40's and then move up toward 54 subs. That is what protecting the industrial base looks like in the current budget environment. Hint, it could get worse in the 30's.
bryanb at 9:42 AM