ATLANTIC OCEAN (Sept. 23, 2014 ) The aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71) leads a formation of ships from Carrier Strike Group (CSG) 12 during a maneuvering exercise. Theodore Roosevelt participated in the exercise with the Peruvian submarine BAP Islay (SS 35), the guided-missile destroyers USS Winston Churchill (DDG 81), USS Forrest Sherman (DDG 98), USS Farragut (DDG 99) and the guided-missile cruiser USS Normandy (CG 60). Theodore Roosevelt is underway preparing for future deployments.
James Holmes, National Interest: What Matters Most for the Navy’s Fleet?
No navy can exercise command before wresting command from its antagonists.
Earlier this month Secretary of Defense Ash Carter delivered a stinging public rebuke to Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus, in the form of a memorandum directing Mabus to truncate acquisitions of littoral combat ships (LCS). Carter wants to cut LCS purchases from fifty-two to forty hulls. He ordered the navy to reallocate the savings to add firepower to the remaining forty, buy more carrier aircraft and guided missiles, and modify submarines to carry more cruise missiles.
Commentary on Carter’s directive was quick in coming, and it divided along very old lines: between partisans of quantity and quality, “presence” and “posture,” peacetime constabulary duty and wartime combat operations. At issue: LCS cutbacks will make it harder to build up to a 300-ship fleet. The fleet currently stands at 272 vessels, and the leadership is counting on sizable numbers of inexpensive hulls to make up the difference. Yet the LCS boasts little combat power in its current form. Better to add fewer ships with more punch, say backers of Carter’s plan, than more ships that do little to augment the fleet’s battle strength.
WNU Editor: And the Pentagon is also focusing on building ships to transport men and material fast .... 2 New Warships En Route to U.S. Navy (Motley Fool). There are also other changes happening in 2016 .... Big U.S. Navy advancement changes coming in 2016 (Military Times).
Developments in AI and missile tech are going to change naval thinking and evolution as much as steam and airplanes did, maybe more.. Naval thinkers, budgeteers, and force designers have not really even started to come to terms with this.
ReplyDeleteWhat James said, plus -- The Pentagon wants to "do something" to contain China and there are many views of what that something is. Probably none of them will work, with an early example being SecDef Carter's command that nations stop construction on/of islands in the SCS, which earned no response from anyone.
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