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Road to 350: What Does the US Navy Do Anyway?
- Thread starter Randy Daytona
- Start date
Spekkio
He bowls overhand.
Maybe in total budget to pay for cool toys. But in the last decade we've seen 5% cuts to military retirement and 5% cuts to BAH.
Absolutely not what we’re talking about here.
Speaking of changing the mixture of CVN’s to light carriers, an article in Proceedings was recently published about possible changes:
A Case for Light Carriers
By Norman Polmar
March 2021. Proceedings. Vol. 147/3/1,417
A Case for Light Carriers
The U.S. Navy already has viable light carriers. It just needs to build more of them.www.usni.org
This quote shows me how unrealistic his argument is:
The bottom line might be to ask a combatant/theater commander—who is responsible for employing naval forces—if he would prefer a single CVN or five and possibly six LHA/LHDs with advanced VSTOL aircraft as well as helicopters and space, each with space for 1,000 troops.
If he thinks that cancelling or replacing one CVN with 5 or 6 LHA/LHA/CVL's along with their attendant air wings would actually happen he is smoking something. Not only that but if you think CVN's are overtasked now go ahead and add another core mission to a CVLBG and see what happens.
Polmar might be a smart guy but it strikes me from that article that the big picture strategy and budget-wise might not be his strong suit.
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What are your thoughts on the UK’s Queen Elizabeth and Prince of Wales?
They're good for the UK but that is all they can really afford, barely. They're designed and built for a completely different mission than our LHA/LHD's and in many ways they will better equipped than them for the CVL mission as well, but they are having to rely on the USMC to fully equip their air wing in the beginning. They're also automated much more so than our ships, the RN has some serious manning concerns, and ship's company will only be ~700 sailors.
So great for the RN, not so great for us.
Going after the bloat in DoD and it’s various agencies should be a priority, but the will likely won’t be there. An easy win would be shoving USSF back in the Air Force, but expending the political capital on that vs, say, infrastructure…? Potholes and airports are gonna win.
Would love for you to elaborate. I'm interested.
5% + Renters Insurance WRT BAH, but what's the military retirement? It's a 20% cut (50% to 40%, a retiree sees 20% less money) to the HIGH-3 pension plan for new troops getting BRS in exchange for a 5% match on TSP; or are you talking about something different?
Clearly right for the UK. It was designed to meet their requirements and budget. So? While I am a solid big deck CV guy it seems like a lot of folks here think the CV will, or should be, around forever. It won't. Time was when the UK was a big deck CV player. Not now. So when will the US be forced to move away from the big multi-purpose CV, and what will replace it? For a bunch of smart well informed and experienced minds, an aweful lot of what I see here is not forward thinking. Things will change. Dismissing folks that make alternative arguements when we have the luxury to do so is short sighted.
Canada did that and it didn't go well and since have rolled back some of those changes, it was also a lot easier since they are a much smaller military. Their procurement is still an utter mess, largely due to politics but it makes ours look like a well-oiled machine at times.
I think combining some of the similar functions each service utilizes, from the mundane like the exchanges (why 3 different ones?) to the more critical like medical, would help a lot. Then there are a few make work programs like bands, who at one point a few years ago cost us almost $500 million a year for the ~130 we had, that need to be cut.
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Looks like they’re not barely able to afford them, at least not with their planned air wing. Will maybe be able to deploy one at a time with a complement of F-35? Proves out the point of it being pointless to build out a CVL fleet if you’re not going to buy your chosen VSTOL platform to go with them.
The problem with Polmar and others is that I would argue the whole CVL debate is not forward thinking but very old thinking, more than 50 years old now. This is only the latest in a long line of almost identical arguments going back to Zumwalt's 'Sea Control Ship' concept that had CVL's equipped a handful of VSTOL fighters and helos. They would make great escort ships but crappy force projection platforms, which is what most more modern commentators seem to envision their more 'modern' proposals being.
I think Navy leadership, rightfully so, has seen these CVL-ish proposals as a dark horse that would cut the budget and take an even more proportional hit in capability for a ship that would be doing nothing more than looking for a mission. They would be more difficult to utilize in a 'peer-level' fight due to their reduced capability and flexibility. For just 20% of the cost you could get just 5% of the capability! I have no idea of the actual return on investment but when you take away a CVN's greater flexibility and, I dare say, sustainability in a wartime scenario you are left with a platform that doesn't give you anywhere near the bang for the buck.
As for the UK, you have to go back over 40 years to when they last had 'big deck' CV's and even then theirs were only half the size of US ones at their biggest. If a country is able to afford it building a 'big deck' carrier seems to be the desire of every blue water Navy, from France to Russia and China.
Another quibble that I have is on a more minor detail that he dismisses with only two, maybe 3, sentences:
Furthermore, there have been studies of the feasibility of operating the Osprey in the antisubmarine and airborne early warning (AEW) roles. The British, Chinese, and Russian navies have flown helicopters in the AEW role with success.
First off I am not sure how he got his info on how successful the Russians and Chinese have been with their AEW helos but even in the best case their capability is far less than a conventional aircraft. Secondly folks just seem to airily dismiss the fact that we would have to design, develop, fund and field a new platform, good luck trying to hang it on an H-60, with a new radar to boot to equip the proposed CVL's with an AEW capability. I'm sure that'll go well.
I'm not against new arguments or bold ideas but I am against dumb ones, while certainly not even close to the dumbest idea I have seen I think the capability and flexibility of a CVN is hard to beat even with the large cost.
Yup, I saw that. They'll have chances to buy more in the future but they are having to face hard budget choices even with an increase to their defense budget.