State of the (Future) U.S. Navy: Naval News-Submarines - Page 3 of 3

[QuarterMaster]

State of the (Future) U.S. Navy: Naval News-Submarines - Page 3 of 3

The more you know.....

[X Bubblehead]

In their endless quest for more ships, the Navy is ignoring the elephant in the room - the infrastructure (and trained people) to maintain them.

The small combatant surface fleet is a mess. The LCM program is a paradigm of mismanagement with the first four of the class relegated to experimental duties, (before being slated for decommissioning after just a decade of service) due to being too expensive to modernize. (Wasn't an open architecture and modular payloads part of their selling points?) The Zumwalt class faired even worse with three ships built, (all assigned within a development squadron. . . ) and weapons systems too expensive to use.

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/41816/critical-fix-will-take-years-to-reach-all-navy-freedom-class-littoral-combat-ships

The Chinese can "flip the power switch off" on a SBG from a healthy stand-off range with one (small) nuke's EMP - no casualties, (making the action more palatable and very tempting) leaving a bunch of expensive ships waiting for a tow to the nearest US port. (The admirals don't like to talk about that scenario for fear of losing Congressional shipbuilding support.) While ships and aircraft may be "hardened", their systems would be overloaded in a near-peer EMP attack. It's actually a good strategy to keep US forces away from Taiwan. One demo, and no surface ship would go near the island.

The More You Know - This is a pretty sobering assessment: https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/AD1097009.pdf Refer to page 38 for a potential Taiwan attack scenario.

I see the submarine force only becoming more valuable until/if the surface Navy gets it together --in about twenty years when new designs are fielded and built in force.

[feet wet]

"I see the submarine force only becoming more valuable until/if the surface Navy gets it together --in about twenty years when new designs are fielded and built in force. "
I agree with the first nine words...not the rest. New designs??? By the same folks that gave us Zumwalt and and LCM's. Don't hold your breath, especially when Congress is allowed to have a hand the design. I am not holding my breath and I doubt that China will wait...

[X Bubblehead]

Which is why I qualified the second half of my sentence with "until / if". Navy surface shipbuilding is a complete goat-rope, for the two, (there are more) examples you cited. We over-design to the point we can't afford to buy in bulk, improperly test to validate those designs, (The "Build it and then fix it" philosophy has not worked well - just look at the growing pains associated with the Ford class) and then suffer through the inevitable cost over-runs that strain the relationships between government and private industry. The situation has not gotten better - it's worse now than ever. It isn't just the Navy, look at how the F-35 program has evolved.

I had a frank discussion with a Program Manager recently, pointing out rather obvious inefficiencies with his program execution, which jeopardize schedule, and inevitably the overall contract price. His answer? "We're on a cost-plus pricing contract. What's the point of saving money?" I told him as a tax-payer, his answer was offensive. Multiply that attitude by thousands of cost-plus programs, and you're looking at billions of dollars of waste built-in. All parties know it's probably going to run over, and run long because there's an element of risk associated with any new program - so it's basically a wink between all players, or as I think of it, a form of legalized corruption.