Secret Sub Base!

[baggygreen]

and now we have a story on the subsim homepage that the US wants to drop the number of carriers again....

not good

[Takao]

Good catch bookworm_020,
I had forgotten about the HMAS Melbourne.

@ baggygreen,
the news hasn't been good for sometime.

With the downfall of the Soviet Union and the increased focus on terrorism, the USN's budget has shrunk considerably. This and the Navy's focus on new technologies has meant that less money is being devoted to getting and keeping hulls in the water.

To me, the USN is more concerned about 20 years from now, than what might happen in the next 5-10 years.

We are down to 279 ships and the number dosen't look like it will rise anytime soon.

Given the Navy's track record, If we see the U.S.S. Gerald R. Ford in operation by 2015 it will be a miracle.

Look at the spiraling costs and delays with the LCS program. Think it is going to improve for the CV-21, DD-1000, and CG-X programs.

Look at the Spruance class destroyers. Several were to have been kept in operation until 2010, to cut costs, they are now all gone save one, the Paul F. Foster(EDD-964). To further save money these ships were not kept in reserve, but scrapped or used in SINKEXs. What a waste of fine ships... During the cold war, ships were kept around for decades. For the Spruances many were sunk or reduced to razor blades after less than 5 years.

The USN's actions remind me of the old idiom "Robbing Peter to pay Paul." Sacrificing the abilities of today's Navy to build a better one for the future. Let's hope their right.

On the positive side, China's blue water navy is still well below the capabilities of our own.

[PeriscopeDepth]

Yes. That carrier article was disturbing. 17 would be a good number. We are now looking at nine. It was made quite clear that we are not able to be everywhere anymore when after 3500 American civllians were killed on 9/11, we weren't able to react until nearly a MONTH later.

The fact is we are not going to be able to afford big nuclear carriers for much longer. And there isn't a point anyways when they are designed to have airwings of 70 or so aircraft and will be going to sea with about 50 a few years from now. And 50 TOPS. We should bite the bullet and start building smaller, conventionally powered carriers that have half the complement (airwing included) of Nimitzs.

PD

[bookworm_020]

Originally Posted by Takao

Look at the Spruance class destroyers. Several were to have been kept in operation until 2010, to cut costs, they are now all gone save one, the Paul F. Foster(EDD-964). To further save money these ships were not kept in reserve, but scrapped or used in SINKEXs. What a waste of fine ships... During the cold war, ships were kept around for decades. For the Spruances many were sunk or reduced to razor blades after less than 5 years.

The main reason for scrapping them was that they required a very large crew to run them compared to ships with similar capablities. The fact they were offered to other nations at next to nothing, and there were no takers, showes why they were one of the first classes of ships to be cut. The fact they lacked the flexablity of ships the same size counted agaist them. At least they provided the stepping stone to the Ticonderoga and Arleigh Burke classes