I often quip to the TSA slack-jawed shamblers at the airport when I fly that I am happy the TSA exists because think of how much more homelessness there would in the USA if the unemployable weren't in shitty government jobs hassling peaceful travelers. The DoD has never passed an audit and in concert with programs at DoE, the budget item is approx one trillion dollars. The chaos avalanche continues. And with all this money spent, the US armed forces are not a long sustainment peer competitor in a hot war. The Pentagon’s accounting records are so convoluted that billions of dollars cannot be...

The next to last floating dumpster of the Little Crappy Ship (LCS), USS Beloit, was launched, yet another future fish apartment complex; the USS Cleveland, the final ship of the Freedom class, is under construction and will be delivered in 2025 (don't hold your breath). The only thing an LCS can do is go fast (when it's engines and reduction gear are working) and none of the mission modules have become deployable which was the entire reason the class was built. Each LCS now has a standard ASuW capability although it's woefully short of what the original module called for so, yeah, there's a...

I often bag on the US Navy surface fleet as a sad shadow of the fleet that used to be. The nuclear submarine fleet is joining that maritime house of woe. U.S. Navy Captain Jerry Hendrix, who in a recent assessment observed: “In fact, production of new submarines dropped from two to just over one per year at the very point when the Navy’s thirty-year shipbuilding plan called for industry to ramp up production to three fast-attack submarines and one ballistic missile submarine per year.” The math is cold and real and the clicking of ruby red slippers will not fix this. Part of this problem is...

The KC46A is the replacement for the renowned KC135 refueling bird which had the last production aircraft rolled out in 1965. The KC46A is plagued with problems to include the bone-headed notion to put the refueling crew in the cockpit instead of the rear of the aircraft at the boom and, wait for it, fuel leakage. Just another Boeing aerospace project plagued by quality issues fore and aft. The aircraft has been in development since Feb. 24, 2011, and its initial flight occurred in Dec. 2014. The current contract, with options, provides Air Mobility Command an inventory of 179 KC-46A tankers...

That New Zealand naval ship that ran aground, foundered, caught fire and capsized with the DEI Captain commanding was an ocean survey and mapping ship. HMNZS Manawanui was a dive and hydrographic vessel of the Royal New Zealand Navy (RNZN). It was one of five vessels active in the Royal New Zealand Navy. A dive and hydro-graphic ship. An ocean floor survey vessel. A dive and hydro-graphic ship. An ocean floor survey vessel. A dive and hydro-graphic ship. An ocean floor survey vessel! It ran aground. Aground. Then it caught fire but no one is responsible, it just happened. They had one job......

*** I have returned from a long sojourn with my wife to Croatia and will be writing more regularly and trying to address issues arising more contemporaneously than the previous month. We were delayed in returning by Hurricane Milton but finally managed to get home: home is intact but gardening and fencing wrecked, recovery in process. *** In 2005, the US Navy slow sank a carrier in an exercise to determine vulnerabilities. Since that time, the munitions technology and delivery systems have evolved significantly. Much of the data remains classified but one has to remember that not sinking the...

Fire all uniformed flag officers in the chain. Releive all SES and naval civilians leaders in the chain. Immediately. And this is peacetime. And keep this in mind, find this many faulty welds and ALL welds on the ship have to be inspected and certified. That is very time consuming and expensive. Will the USN do the right thing? I doubt it. The fraud cavalcade never ends in the US Navy. And they are lying when they say this did not affect ship safety. Welding is an important component of keeping metal objects intact. In a letter to House and Senate armed services committee members Thursday,...