History, Politics And Current Affairs

Johnnie Lyle wrote: ↑Wed Apr 12, 2023 11:56 pm Good.

Damn shame it cost 17 lives for the Navy to remember how to teach seamanship and navigation, but at least they improved things.

“You almost feel over-prepared for some of the positions that you’re in because when you get to the ship, you’re not doing anything close to what you were doing [in the simulator.] You’re conning, which has its own aspects to it that are a little challenging,” said Hoefner. “You’re going to be looking out the windows the entire time when you’re on watch. You’re the primary lookout on the ship. You should be training the boatswain lookouts that are rotating through on the bridges.”

clancyphile wrote: ↑Fri Apr 14, 2023 10:54 pm Here's a thought... museum ship for ex-CVN-65.

Saves the scrapping issue.

clancyphile wrote: ↑Fri Apr 14, 2023 10:54 pm Here's a thought... museum ship for ex-CVN-65.

Saves the scrapping issue.

clancyphile wrote: ↑Fri Apr 14, 2023 10:54 pm Here's a thought... museum ship for ex-CVN-65.

Saves the scrapping issue.

Poohbah wrote: ↑Sat Apr 15, 2023 4:44 am

clancyphile wrote: ↑Fri Apr 14, 2023 10:54 pm Here's a thought... museum ship for ex-CVN-65.

Saves the scrapping issue.

Unaffordable for a ship that big.

Johnnie Lyle wrote: ↑Sat Apr 15, 2023 12:31 am

clancyphile wrote: ↑Fri Apr 14, 2023 10:54 pm Here's a thought... museum ship for ex-CVN-65.

Saves the scrapping issue.

Completely unaffordable, though.

James1978 wrote: ↑Sat Apr 15, 2023 6:52 am

Poohbah wrote: ↑Sat Apr 15, 2023 4:44 am

clancyphile wrote: ↑Fri Apr 14, 2023 10:54 pm Here's a thought... museum ship for ex-CVN-65.

Saves the scrapping issue.

Unaffordable for a ship that big.

Speaking of big ships, how is the Midway museum doing? I believe that's your neck of the woods.

TRANSCOM’s Unreadiness
By Seth Cropsey
March 27, 2023

U.S. Sealift is Insufficient for a Major Power War

The United States is a maritime power in disarray, as the U.S. Navy’s current woes indicate: the Navy cannot build enough ships, with designs from the 1980s, to maintain the fleet’s current size, nor can it keep ships in the active battle force to preserve a fleet large enough to even maintain an acceptable balance of forces against China.

Yet the issue of sealift may be more critical, and more eroded, than that of active combat capacity. American political figures should take note, and resource the U.S.’ maritime transport capabilities as thoroughly as what is required to sharpen the U.S.’ naval combat fleet’s power.

America is a bizarre maritime power. From the view of national interest, the U.S. is indisputably a maritime nation. It exists at significant remove from Eurasia, but fundamentally depends upon the free flow of goods along Eurasia’s littorals, and between Eurasia and the Americas, for its political-economic model to be sustained. In this sense, the U.S. is a maritime power in the same mold as the UK or Imperial Japan, with a distinct interest in the freedom of the seas, stable international chokepoints, and most fundamentally, an existential interest in the denial of any power or coalition hegemony upon the Eurasian landmass.

Yet the U.S. is also a continental power, one that has a historical industrial heartland, massive agricultural capacity, and energy reserves large enough to sustain domestic and international consumption. There is a distinct strain in American strategic thought, driven by this hybrid nature, that downplays the role and relevance of Eurasia in American policy and towards American interests. This strain has sought all sorts of quick-fixes to the American strategic problem, including the overwhelming deployment of nuclear weapons, the exclusive use of airpower, and the continuous underestimation of naval power.

Even American navalists misunderstand the role of maritime strength in U.S. policy. The U.S. must fight every war in an expeditionary manner. The reality of a great-power war, or even a limited war on the Eurasian rimland, is that it will be fought thousands of miles from the United States, and therefore requires the U.S. to transport men and materiel over those thousands of miles of the open ocean, and do so continuously – after all, even the Korean police action of 1950-1953 required hundreds of thousands of troops, multiple aircraft carriers, and a continuous “tail” of ships to support the forward-deployed force in the field.

America’s strategic “tail”, the critical link between the continental United States and the Eurasian landmass, is as brittle as a thin sheet of ice. U.S. TRANSCOM, the umbrella for each service’s transportation functions, is far smaller than what it was during even the Gulf and Iraq Wars. Most critical among TRANSCOM’s service elements, however, is Military Sealift Command (MSC), the U.S. Navy’s logistics component. The U.S. Army’s Military Surface Deployment and Distribution Command (SDDC) manages supply flows to units on the ground and ensures they reach port rapidly and in the correct numbers. Meanwhile, the Air Force’s Air Mobility Command (AMC) maintains rapid-deployment capacity and the essential tool that is the U.S. tanker fleet of range-extender aircraft. But MSC, given its maritime nature, carries the bulk of the materiel needed in any major conflict.

MSC maintains a number of ships under its continuous control for sustainment of peacetime operations. But these ships are grossly insufficient to support a wartime surge. For that, MSC would need to turn to chartered ships, almost invariably crewed by U.S. Merchant Mariners. This has been the case, whether the U.S. charters a major supplementary fleet or moves mothballed ships out of storage, since the Second World War.

The distinction today is that the U.S. Merchant Marine lacks the ships and mariners to execute a major expansion in a great-power conflict, while the U.S. Navy and military more broadly has no experience defending American logistics from enemy predation.

The U.S. Merchant Marine is comprised of under 200 vessels that can carry over 1,000 tons, of which 152 the U.S. Maritime Administration (MARAD) considers as having military utility. Even in 1996, decades after the U.S. Merchant Marine’s 1950s-1970s global market peak, the U.S. Merchant Marine still maintained 320 relevant ships. The U.S., to sustain major Eurasian combat operations, and assuming no damage to American logistics, would need some three times this force at minimum for a large-scale Eurasian war and, of equal relevance, to ensure that U.S.-bound shipping remains regular enough to sustain the American economy.

The U.S. could purchase several hundred ships from foreign buyers. American allies, most notably South Korea and Japan, are both major shipbuilders. Japan in particular is expanding its merchant ship construction industry to compete with South Korea and China, specializing in liquified natural gas (LNG) powered ships, which the U.S. would be especially suited to use considering its domestic reserves.

Yet this would solve only part of the issue. Only one institution, the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy (USMMA), trains mariners with a service obligation in crisis. The USMMA produces just over 200 graduates per year and has not received a funding injection in decades – one of its major academic facilities quite literally lacks in-building toilets and heating. It will take several years for the U.S. at minimum to train enough mariners to crew new ships, assuming the USMMA were to maximize class capacity and receive funding to sustain training programs.

In turn, the issue of adversary logistics targeting comes to the fore. The most vulnerable and least adequate part of the American military is its logistics system. The same system is the lynchpin in conducting successful expeditionary warfare. U.S. adversaries, particularly China in the Indo-Pacific, will target American and allied ports and logistics vessels to disrupt the U.S.’ long-term sustainment capacity and cripple U.S. military power after just weeks of war.

The solution is as clear as it is difficult. The U.S. must expand its merchant capacity through foreign purchasing, ensure that the USMMA has the financing to produce the merchant mariners the U.S. so desperately requires, and construct the warships needed to defend American logistics during a great power war.

MARAD Head ‘Not At All Confident’ Ready Reserve Fleet Could be Crewed in a Crisis
By: John Grady
March 29, 2023

The head of the Maritime Administration “was not at all confident” that all the ships in the Ready Reserve Fleet could be crewed if called to duty in a crisis.

The United States was already short 1,8000 credentialed mariners for its vessels before the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, retired Rear Adm. Ann Phillips said Tuesday in a joint hearing of the House Armed Services readiness and seapower and projection forces subcommittees.

She pointed to the addition of five more vessels transferred from Military Sealift Command to MARAD control and retirements of an aging workforce as likely pushing the gap for merchant mariners even higher.

While the House Armed Services Committee last year approved a grant program for MARAD to expand its Centers of Excellence program to attract and retrain mariners, there were no funds set aside to pay for it.

Phillips said programs like that are essential for the future, and MARAD is working closely with community colleges, union schools and others to demonstrate to young people there are careers open to them.

“We have to have ships for them to sail on,” she said.

But the questions facing MARAD is who does it have and if they will said, Phillips asked rhetorically. She referred both to the age of the ships in the fleet and the workforce. In her opening statement, she noted that the Ready Reserve Fleet is increasingly “difficult and challenging” to repair. Some of its vessels use propulsion systems that were retired decades ago in commercial shipping and exist in no other vessels.

At the same time, space for repair in the nation’s shipyards is at a premium with the Navy, Coast Guard, Army Corps of Engineers and commercial shippers needing dry dock work. USNI News reported four Puget Sound dry docks were pulled from service over concerns of their viability to survive major seismic event. Should there be a mention of the timeline to reopen here?

The nation is “a generation late” in modernizing its roll-on, roll-off ships critical to military sealift, Air Force Gen. Jacqueline Van Ovost, head of Transportation command, said. She and others noted the ships’ average age is 44, and 17 of them are over 50.

The remark caused Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Fla.), chairman of the readiness panel to say he saw “a red-light cluster” blinking.

The age and condition of the MARAD fleet “just screams out” for attention, Rep. Joe Courtney, D-R.I., and ranking member of the seapower panel, said, citing reports of problems in their readiness to supply Ukraine.

During her opening remarks, Waltz said the sealift fleet had concerning readiness rates in recent exercises.

Van Ovost said Transportation Command was analyzing the results of the 2022 Turbo Activation exercise and using better metrics so it would have more confidence in being able to assess the fleet’s readiness.

“We have not yet seen the return on investment” in various modernization efforts and reforms that followed after the 2019 exercise, Van Ovost said. Only 40 percent of the ships involved in the exercise were capable of being put to sea on short notice.

When asked, Van Ovost said that recapitalizing the Ready Reserve Fleet is on a schedule of buying two used vessels and modifying them for military use and also building would not be complete until 2032.

One way to speed construction would be follow the model used in Philadelphia to build Empire State VI for MARAD, Courtney said. In Philadelphia, there was a designated vessel construction manager whose duties were to keep the building on schedule and held to the fixed price.

Phillips confirmed the vessel is being delivered “on time and on budget.”

“Accelerating the recapitalization … will be very helpful,” Van Ovost said. It would also allow these ships to be ready to operate under cyber threat and in a contested environment.

Phillips said the first two used vessels – Cape Arundel and Cape Cortes — to begin modernizing the Ready Reserve Fleet have been made, and MARAD is moving ahead to buy three more starting in April. Both modified vessels were in the American roll-on/roll-off Carrier program and are being transferred from Defense Department control to MARAD in the Department of Transportation.

MARAD also will take possession of Empire State VI, its first National Security Multi-Mission vessel this year. Empire State will first see service as an up-to-date training ship for New York’s Maritime Academy, but can also serve in humanitarian and disaster relief missions. The next four will go to the other state maritime academies.

Phillips and Van Ovost said the Tanker Security Program to overcome shortfalls in fuel delivery and ensure access to U.S.-flagged vessels is progressing on schedule. Phillips expected to add “the next 10 vessels very shortly” and “go to 20 ships in 2024.”

Committee members repeatedly mentioned how important this was for dispersed operations in the Indo-Pacific and even more so now with the closing of the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility in Hawaii. The bulk fuel storage facility – used by all services – was ordered closed following leakages into Oahu’s water system.

Van Ovost added the key to future readiness in the air and maritime transportation is “consistent funding [and] a budget on time,” so modernization programs can move along and the command and MARAD can launch new starts.

Continuing resolutions put tight controls on spending to previous year’s spending and even tighter restrictions whether to allow new program starts.

Lack of funds hampers emergency naval fleet from growing faster
By Megan Eckstein
April 6, 2023

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — The U.S. Maritime Administration is pursuing a three-pronged approach to update and grow the nation’s surge sealift capacity, according to its leader Ann Phillips, but she can’t go after the third one until Congress funds it.

Following a 2018 requirements study by the Navy that, among other things, highlighted insufficient sealift, the Defense and Transportation departments developed a plan to recapitalize and extend the service life of some existing ships in the Maritime Administration’s sealift fleet. The plan also kicked off efforts to buy used sealift ships from the commercial market, which Congress authorized and for which the Navy budgeted at a rate of two per year. And finally, plans were made to design and build new ships.

That last one hit a snag last year when the House and Senate armed services committees authorized a new-construction sealift program, but the appropriations committees didn’t fund it.

“We’re moving forward … with all best speed to execute the Vessel Acquisition Management program, the buy-used [effort], with the assets that we have available,” Phillips said during a panel discussion at the Sea-Air-Space conference on April 3. “If an opportunity is presented to accelerate that, that is another way to move forward there.”

“With these three prongs, we’re focusing on the two that we have right now, the tools at our disposal: rehab-wise, and buy used. … As long as we are able to keep doing that, we begin to make headway” in making the sealift fleet larger and more capable, she added. “But we can’t afford a lapse, I’ll be honest there. Any hesitation, and we’re going to start to slip back.”

The Ready Reserve Fleet, which U.S. Transportation Command would call upon to move Army and Marine Corps gear into theater during conflict, and which is required to scramble into service on five days’ notice, is a subset of the Maritime Administration’s larger National Defense Reserve Fleet.

Today the Ready Reserve Fleet includes 45 ships with an average age of 45 years, Phillips said.

In congressional testimony to two House Armed Services Committee panels on March 28, Phillips said the Ready Reserve Fleet would soon grow to more than 50 vessels following both the transfer of a few Military Sealift Command vessels into her administration’s custody and the two-a-year procurement of used vessels from the commercial market.

But that’s still too small, warned military leaders, including Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Gilday.

The Navy is conducting another study on its fleet size requirements based on the 2022 National Defense Strategy and evolving operating concepts like the Joint Warfighting Concept, he said at the Sea-Air-Space panel discussion.

“That applies to sealift as well. And so the sealift we needed, the current figures that we have, are grounded on analysis that was done decades ago. And so that’s an obvious question to ask: The Marines are operating differently. The Army’s operating a little differently. Exactly how much sealift do you need?”

Rep. Joe Courtney of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee, spoke forcefully at the March 28 hearing about the need to more rapidly grow the sealift fleet by building new ships in the United States. Today’s fleet faces an uphill battle to meet its mission due to its age, he said.

Philipps noted at the conference that some Ready Reserve Fleet vessels were activated to move weapons and supplies into Ukraine, but Courtney said in the hearing that mission was hampered due to ships breaking down.

‘Made in America’
Meanwhile, the Philly Shipyard is building a training ship — a National Security Multi-Mission Vessel — for the nation’s maritime academies. The business could continue building that same ship design to support the Ready Reserve Fleet, but only if appropriators earmark enough money for this last piece of the three-pronged approach.

Courtney called the training ship “one of the most promising ‘made in America’ programs.” These academy training ships already face the prospect of being scrambled into service in response to a military or first responder emergency, he added, but once the shipyard finishes building the five training ships, it could continue the production line and build more, albeit specifically devoted to sealift missions.

The shipyard “was almost down to 20 workers when this program started; it’s 2,000 today. And the fact is that they can take on more after they are done with this maritime training ship procurement, which is to basically have a ‘made in America’ sealift fleet. We do not need to be buying ships overseas on the used market. When will we learn the lesson of COVID, that international supply chains cannot be relied on in terms of price or accessibility, and we need to bring back the commercial and shipyard sector in this country? And we showed with this program that we can actually do it,” Courtney said in the hearing.

He later noted that the acquisition model used for this — the Maritime Administration hired a vessel construction manager to ensure the program stayed on track — has led the first ship, the Empire State, to remain on schedule and on budget. It will deliver to the Maritime Administration this summer.

In contrast to this predictability, he said he’s heard anecdotally that the pricing and availability of used ships isn’t steady right now, as demand for moving commercial goods globally remains high.

“I’m certainly ready to do everything I can to talk to appropriators about the fact that we really should not just put all our eggs in the commercial market” and should, instead, pay to build new ships.

The armed services committees last year wanted to build 10 new ships, and Courtney said he’d continue his push for funding to do so.

CNO: ‘Very Important’ to Add 2nd Constellation-class Shipyard, Build 4 Frigates a Year
By: Sam LaGrone
April 18, 2023

Navy leadership wants to expand construction of its new guided-missile frigate to four ships per year as soon as practical, service leaders told the Senate Armed Service Committee on Tuesday.

By the end of the year, the service expects Constellation-class (FFG-62) shipbuilder Fincantieri Marinette Marine to have the technical data package ready for a second shipbuilder to start constructing more Connies, Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro said in response to SASC ranking member Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.)

“We’re actually waiting for the completion of the technical design package, which is expected by the end of this year,” Del Toro said.
“We will review it and at that point, we’ll make a decision on whether we have the ability to actually take that technical data package and make sure that it’s mature enough to actually compete for another shipyard so that we can have two shipyards.”

In follow-up comments to Wicker’s questions, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Gilday said the service would want both Marinette and the second yard to each eventually produce two Connies a year.

“I think it’s very important … that we could get to the second shipyard and a two-a-year [rate] from each shipyard,” he told the committee.

Marinette started fabrication on the first ship, Constellation (FFG-62), last year after a $795 million award in 2020. The Navy exercised options for the second frigate Congress (FFG-63) in 2021 and Chesapeake (FFG-64) last year.

The call for four Constellations a year is a departure from the Navy’s current long-range outlook for the frigate line. Based on two of the three alternatives in Fiscal Year 2024 30-year shipbuilding plan, the Navy is not planning to hit a sustained two-a-year rate for frigates until the 2030s.

The current “saw-tooth” pattern alternates the buy between one and two frigates every two years through 2027 for a total of seven in the current five-year budget outlook.

While the shipbuilding plan, also released on Tuesday, is a placeholder ahead of the Navy’s planned force structure assessment due in June, the new report gave insight into why the service would want to accelerate the line.

“Increased numbers of smaller multi-mission combatants, such as Constellation-class Frigates (FFG 62), enable more efficient distribution of missions across the surface fleet, freeing up the more capable [guided-missile destroyers] for critical high-end missions,” reads the long-range shipbuilding plan, obtained by USNI News on Tuesday.

The current Arleigh Burke-class destroyers have been tasked with low-intensity missions as part of individual deployments, like providing host platforms for Coast Guard law enforcement missions.

The 7,300-ton frigate is based on the Italian and French navies’ FREMM frigate, but was heavily modified to meet U.S. military survivability standards, growth margins and government-furnished equipment. Leidos subsidiary Gibbs & Cox reworked the original design.

The Navy bought the guided-missile combatant after intense congressional pressure led by the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who was highly critical of the Littoral Combat Ship program and wanted the Navy to pursue a warship with more capabilities, like expanded anti-air capabilities and anti-submarine warfare roles.

Included in the terms after Fincantieri Marinette Marine won the original contract in 2020 was service ownership of the technical data packages needed to build the ship so the Navy could hold a competition for the second yard.

Gulf Coast yards Austal USA in Mobile, Ala., and Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula, Miss., have both positioned themselves to take on roles as the second frigate yard. Austal, which once only built aluminum ships, has stood up a steel line to expand the types of ships it can build. Ingalls is completing the final National Security Cutters for the Coast Guard and has construction capacity available.

In the hearing, Gilday stressed that maximizing production is the Navy’s goal across the seven yards that build warships.

“Two shipyards is in the plan,” Gilday said. “We want to make sure that we’re measuring twice and cutting once before that decision is made.”

No Timeline Yet to Add Tomahawk, SM-6 to Constellation Frigates, Says Program Manager
By: Sam LaGrone
April 11, 2023

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. – The Navy is still working through a timeline to meet a congressional mandate to add Standard Missile 6 and the Tomahawk Cruise Missiles to future Constellation-class guided-missile frigates, service officials told USNI News.

A requirement from the Fiscal Year 2023 National Defense Authorization Act directed the Navy Secretary to add SM-6s and Tomahawks to the Connies starting with the second hull. The frigates, based on the Italian and French navies’ FREMM frigate, are multi-mission, but will specialize in anti-submarine warfare.

The original design of the 7,300-ton frigate called for a 32-cell Mark 41 vertical launch system that would field the smaller Evolved Seasparrow Missile (ESSM) Block 2 anti-air missile and the SM-2 Block IIICs.

In an explanatory statement accompanying the FY 2023 NDAA, Congress said it wants the integration of the Tomahawk to serve as a test bed for a virtualized system to control the Tomahawk and to experiment with the missile options for future unmanned surface vehicles.

“The committee notes the Navy is developing and fielding ‘virtualized’ weapons control system technology, including systems to support its vision for Tomahawk-capable unmanned surface vessels. The committee believes the FFG-62 class should include optimized Tomahawk Weapons System hardware and software, which would both provide a necessary lethality increase for the FFG-62 class and serve as a key technical risk reduction advance in realizing Tomahawk-capable USVs,” reads the statement.
“The committee believes that jumping directly to Tomahawk-capable USVs without first having ensured that the FFG-62 class is Tomahawk-capable presents excessive technical risk in such USV programs.”

SM-6 and Tomahawks are larger missiles and require a longer version of VLS and additional software – and in the case of Tomahawk – additional control stations.

Constellation-class frigate program manager Capt. Kevin Smith told USNI News last week that the program office, Naval Air Systems Command and Naval Sea Systems Command are working to feather the new requirements into the frigates starting with the second frigate, but there is no firm timeline.

“It’s been very clear to me from my leadership, we don’t want to make changes to the baseline until we get to a certain point,” Smith said in a response to a question from USNI News at the Navy League’s annual Sea Air Space symposium.
“From an Aegis perspective, with the [Aegis] common source library, you can imagine SM-6 may not be that far out of reach … Tomahawk is a little different. If you were trying to install a Tomahawk suite, like on a Flight III [Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer], it wouldn’t fit on a frigate.”

Constellation (FFG-62) is under construction at Fincantieri Marinette Marine’s shipyard in Wisconsin following a $795 million contract award that the Navy issued the yard in 2020. Since then, the service has awarded follow-on contracts for Congress (FFG-63)in 2021 and Chesapeake (FFG-64) last year.

The first hull is set to deliver to the Navy by Fiscal Year 2026. The service will then install the new capabilities on the other ships in the class.

“The plan here is to get at that after we get through our initial operational capability and our test events. We are working right now with NAVAIR, as well as NAVSEA on a roadmap to get us that capability,” Smith said.
“Nothing is decided quite yet but we are working on meeting the tenant and language, but right now the plan is not to cause any disruption to the lead ship as far as production and integration.”