The beat-down goes on administered by the non-naval armories of the Houthis in Yemen. Geoff Ziezulewicz avers: Those SM-6 missiles are a cool four million dollars a pop. A rather chilly one third of a billion dollars in SM-6 expenditures alone. 320 million dollars. Guns are economical, reliable, versatile, and proven. Did I mention economical? Any kind of guided missile/munition is expensive. 5-inch guns are good. Might 6-inch or 8-inch be better? And why only one turret? Granted, going back to building ships around big-gun turrets probably isn't a good thing (an Iowa-class with 16" guns...

Another incipient program doomed to failure, cost ballooning, massive incompetence and buyer's remorse. The program should be stopped immediately and every flag officer currently serving fired, the Department of the Navy SES structure gutted and cashiered and blow the lid off all the mismanagement and classified hiding schemes of the Navy Operational Test and Evaluation bureaucracy that has been a keen contributor to the absolute failure of all ships built since 1991 with the last successful hull commissioned in the Aegis. The time for creative destruction and absolute disruption of business...

Memo to DOGE: Fire all 8,222 Federal Senior Executive Service (SES) employees. Rehire if needed as Limited Term appointments only as defined under 5 U.S.C. 3132 (a)(5): limited term appointee means an individual appointed under a nonrenewable appointment for a term of 3 years or less to a SES positions the duties of which will expire at the end of such term. In 2024, the basic annual salary for SES members ranges from $180,000 to $246,200. Fire all 93 federal district attorneys. Fire all Ambassadors (they have to submit their resignations with each new administration, they serve "at the...

Fact is more hilarious than fiction now. USS Repulse and USS Prince of Wales would be more appropriate names for these missile sponges and future fish apartments. The sinking of Prince of Wales and Repulse by Japanese naval aviation was a naval engagement in World War II, as part of the war in the Pacific, that took place on 10 December 1941 in the South China Sea off the east coast of the British colonies of Malaya (present-day Malaysia) and the Straits Settlements (present-day Singapore and its coastal towns). In his last week in office, President Joe Biden on Monday named the Navy’s next...

Employees will start moving into new $1.7B NGA HQ in St. Louis, MO in Fall 2025. In other news, it’s a good thing the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency wasn’t called the National Intelligence-Geospatial Agency... Please. The budget is classified of course but part the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) is disclosing the aggregate amount of $73.4 billion in requested appropriations for the Fiscal Year 2025 National Intelligence Program (NIP) of which a portion is spent here. My Substack Email me at cgpodcast@pm.me

Navigation is fundamental. Every ship in the USN should do this yearly. Advanced, hand-computed celestial navigation is a full-time job. It required both of us to be on (or near) the bridge for approximately 18 hours a day, especially during the morning and evening star fixes. Performing sight reduction by hand required approximately three to four hours per day. Navigators who aspire to conduct a similar voyage may use STELLA to avoid cumbersome hand computations. The surface warfare junior officers and quartermasters loved this evolution. No longer able to stare at the VMS screen, they were...