Road to 350: What Does the US Navy Do Anyway?

[Jim123]

The Ford can’t ever be two places at once.

Disruptive thinking would say otherwise.

Urban Dictionary: Picard Maneuver

Picard Maneuver: [The Picard] Maneuver is a battle tactic invented by Starfleet [Captain Jean-Luc Picard]. In 2355, Picard was in command of the USS...

www.urbandictionary.com

An aircraft carrier is just a starship of the seas...

 

[Pags]

Retiring the Truman Early Is a Necessary Strategic Decision

The Navy’s decision to forego the midlife refueling of the USS Harry S. Truman (CVN-75) at the expense of some forward presence is the right one—and long overdue.

www.usni.org

This could be brilliant or not, but I couldn’t get past the horribly written first sentence.

If the author says the Ford will be so awesome capability-wise that we won’t need the Truman, he is wrong. The only reason an aircraft carrier is relevant and useful is location location location (i.e. ~2 acres of U.S. territory, anywhere at sea, with a CVW). The Ford can’t ever be two places at once.

I found this quote to be interesting:
"In our various games, discussions, and research we could not establish a clear link between Navy day-to-day forward presence and desired political outcomes."

When I was in 7th Fleet we did A LOT of presence missions, steaming all over SE Asia for 9mo/yr to conduct exercises (airshows) with allied nations, play some soccer with host navies, and maybe paint a school. Other than burning a lot of gas, airframe hours, and deferring a lot shipboard maintenance I'm not sure the end result was. I certainly doubt that anyone got anything but the most basic levels of training out of the exercises. Sure, we looked friendly with our regional partners but I'm not personally sure that making China feel all alone is the best strategy. Nations that feel encircled and alone aren't incentivized to play nice with others.

 

[Recovering LSO]

Randy, where are you going to find the people to man these ships? There aren’t enough (not even close) to properly man what we’ve got. AI isn’t the singular answer, though automation can help. Ships (and squadrons for that matter) are going to see with what amounts to brand new, undertrained skeleton crews - adding more ships could only be made possible by a significant increase in personnel end strength, and that ain’t happening.

 

[Deleted member 67144 scul]

Randy, where are you going to find the people to man these ships?

The Selective Service System.

 

[Flash]

I found this quote to be interesting:
"In our various games, discussions, and research we could not establish a clear link between Navy day-to-day forward presence and desired political outcomes."

When I was in 7th Fleet we did A LOT of presence missions, steaming all over SE Asia for 9mo/yr to conduct exercises (airshows) with allied nations, play some soccer with host navies, and maybe paint a school. Other than burning a lot of gas, airframe hours, and deferring a lot shipboard maintenance I'm not sure the end result was. I certainly doubt that anyone got anything but the most basic levels of training out of the exercises. Sure, we looked friendly with our regional partners but I'm not personally sure that making China feel all alone is the best strategy. Nations that feel encircled and alone aren't incentivized to play nice with others.

This is one of the problems I have with trying to 'quantify' things, some stuff can't be measured effectively no matter how you try and look at it. One of those is forward presence and its effects on 'desired outcomes'. I seriously doubt the author had access to all the latest State, attaché or CCMD reporting on how well things are going with countries X, Y and Z and how well our military engagement is going with each.

Sometimes merely showing the flag, literally, is important as is getting a baseline knowledge and working relationship with various countries. It is those sort of intangibles that you can't measure on an excel spreadsheet or in a quad chart. An excellent example of such intangibles comes from the transcript of a seminar on the Falklands War hosted by the RAF Historical Society and attended by many of the important RAF leaders from the war. Included was the detailed account of the RAF Attaché to DC and how much cooperation he got from his American colleagues because he had a lot of established personal relationships, in addition to the military to military and country to country relationships that existed. Folks went out of their way to help the Brits not only because the leadership directed it but because he was a colleague they knew from years of dealing with him and his fellow countrymen.

 

[Brett327]

Ford doesn't inherently do anything different than Nimitz class CVNs do. Fundamentally, it provides a platform from which the CVW operates.

 

[UInavy]

The Selective Service System.

The only thing I can imagine less desirable than undertrained crews who volunteered for duty are undertrained crews that were forced into duty. No.

 

[exNavyOffRec]

Randy, where are you going to find the people to man these ships? There aren’t enough (not even close) to properly man what we’ve got. AI isn’t the singular answer, though automation can help. Ships (and squadrons for that matter) are going to see with what amounts to brand new, undertrained skeleton crews - adding more ships could only be made possible by a significant increase in personnel end strength, and that ain’t happening.

On the engineering side of the CVN's we make things harder on ourselves than we need to, many of the watchstations are redundant and only need to be manned for startups and shutdowns.

 

[Jim123]

The only thing I can imagine less desirable than undertrained crews who volunteered for duty are undertrained crews that were forced into duty. No.

On the other hand, if those crews came from a wider cut of society then it might motivate the voters to encourage the elected officials to either better train those crews or to more carefully consider their policies in sending those crews places. "More with less" and "more with even less" don't have to be the only choices.

 

[UInavy]

On the other hand, if those crews came from a wider cut of society then it might motivate the voters to encourage the elected officials to either better train those crews or to more carefully consider their policies in sending those crews places. "More with less" and "more with even less" don't have to be the only choices.

Sure, that’d be an ideal outcome. I can’t imagine that as occuring in a realistic enough turnaround time (multiple administrations) that we don’t hurt/kill some folks on the way to that conclusion.

However, if we want to talk some sort of mandatory service for all, be it military or civ- I’m all for it.

 

[Brett327]

My gut tells me that in today's cultural climate, a suggestion of anything resembling mando national service is going to be challenged in court. Any effort to institute a draft under anything other than emergency war powers (I.E. a credible national existential threat) is going to get challenged as well. How SCOTUS would come down on that will depend on the particulars, but I think the average citizen would have a legitimate claim against being involuntarily pressed into military service for wars of choice, and the like.

 

[UInavy]

My gut tells me that in today's cultural climate, a suggestion of anything resembling mando national service is going to be challenged in court. Any effort to institute a draft under anything other than emergency war powers (I.E. a credible national existential threat) is going to get challenged as well. How SCOTUS would come down on that will depend on the particulars, but I think the average citizen would have a legitimate claim against being involuntarily pressed into military service for wars of choice, and the like.

Without going too far toward Starship Troopers or the Politics Thunderdome (which I try to avoid like leftover ox tail in WR 1), what about mando national service (of varying flavors) in exchange for increased benefits? Such as say, college, student loan forgiveness, decreased interest rates on small business loans, etc.

 

[Brett327]

Without going too far toward Starship Troopers or the Politics Thunderdome (which I try to avoid like leftover ox tail in WR 1), what about mando national service (of varying flavors) in exchange for increased benefits? Such as say, college, student loan forgiveness, decreased interest rates on small business loans, etc.

Interesting, and that does sweeten the deal, but I still think there would be a problem with compelling a citizen to do something like this outside of emergency war powers. Unless it was voluntary, it's going to get challenged. Might be interesting to see how other countries have tackled mando conscription, just for perspective.

 

[UInavy]

Interesting, and that does sweeten the deal, but I still think there would be a problem with compelling a citizen to do something like this outside of emergency war powers. Unless it was voluntary, it's going to get challenged. Might be interesting to see how other countries have tackled mando conscription, just for perspective.

Then perhaps just take the word 'mando' out of my post. That way, it becomes 'give something to get something'. I'm not talking 'citizen versus civilian' craziness, just the opportunity to reap increased benefits with a term of service to the nation.

 

[Jim123]

I'm not positively for or against conscription but now that we've been in Afghanistan for 17 years, a couple cycles of "We're leaving"/"No, we're not," and still no end in sight, I'd like the perpetual war on terror to be a notch or two higher in the national discourse.