Blog

The Carrier Cavalcade of Calamities Continues Part XVIII

carrierfire6

Please note the highlights from the new report from CRS below on the Ford-class carrier fiasco speaks to “welding issues”, call me Captain Obvious but in shipbuilding or the building of any exquisite platforms, the identification of welding issues infers a complete welding inspection of the entire ship. That ain’t cheap but then again when you build these future fish apartments on the taxpayer’s dime, the pursuit of excellence is always optional.

Procuring more of the incredibly poorly designed and executed new nuclear super-carriers is not only martial malpractice but a death warrant for the thousands of sailors assigned to these if employed during a peer conflict in this century.

USS Gerald R. Ford or Ford-Class Aircraft Carrier.

The U.S. Navy Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78) and the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman (CVN-75) underway in the Atlantic Ocean on 4 June 2020, marking the first time a Gerald R. Ford-class and a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier operated together underway. Gerald R. Ford is underway conducting integrated air wing operations, and the Harry S. Truman Carrier Strike Group remained at sea in the Atlantic as a certified carrier strike group force ready for tasking in order to protect the crew from the risks posed by COVID-19, following their successful deployment to the U.S. 5th and 6th Fleet areas of operation.

Read the full report at your own peril of bubbling anger issues and remove all sharp objects from the room.

Oversight issues for Congress for the CVN-78 program include the following:

– faulty welds on certain new Navy ships, including Ford-class carriers, that were first reported in late September 2024;

whether to procure CVN-82 in FY2030 (as proposed in the Navy’s FY2025 budget submission), in FY2028 (as scheduled in prior-year Navy budget submissions), or in FY2029;

– whether to procure CVN-82 and a subsequent aircraft carrier (which would be CVN-83) as a two-ship buy that would similar to the two-ship buy that was used for procuring CVN-80 and CVN-81;

-the future aircraft carrier force level;

-CVN-78 program issues that were raised in a January 2024 report from the Department of Defense’s (DOD’s) Director of Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E) and a June 2023 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report on DOD weapon systems; and

-the procurement of aircraft carriers after CVN-81 or CVN-82.

https://news.usni.org/2025/01/17/report-to-congress-on-ford-class-aircraft-carrier-program

Stop building these things!

 
Email me at cgpodcast@pm.me

Trump & Hannity: Unveiling Foreign Policy Shifts – New Episode of the Kyle Anzalone Show

In this episode of the Kyle Anone Show, we dive deep into Trump’s recent interview with Sean Hannity, where he reveals his bold and controversial views on foreign policy. We’ll unpack the rhetoric surrounding Trump’s stance on Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran while highlighting key details that shape his approach.

Additionally, we explore Trump’s policies regarding Gaza. Initially seen as a peacemaker who brokered a ceasefire deal before taking office, recent statements suggest a troubling shift towards endorsing ethnic cleansing in the region. Join us as we analyze these critical developments and their implications for peace in the Middle East.

The Icebreaker Follies Continue to Break the Bank and Not Deliver

aiviq

Aiviq

The US has 1.5 icebreakers because it has had to cannibalize one of its ancient and sclerotic icebreakers to make the remaining heavy work.But for all this, the same Coast Guard bought the Aiviq for $125 million late last year. And don’t expect them to get this right. The ship was built to operate in the Arctic, but it has a type of propulsion system susceptible to failure in ice. 

…a type of propulsion system susceptible to failure in ice.

…a type of propulsion system susceptible to failure in ice.

…a type of propulsion system susceptible to failure in ice.

Former Coast Guard icebreaker captains were reluctant to criticize the purchase of the Aiviq when contacted by ProPublica, in part because it has taken impossibly long for the service to build the new heavy icebreakers it says it needs.

“Is the Coast Guard getting the Aiviq a bad thing? No,” said Rear Adm. Jeff Garrett, a former captain of the Healy icebreaker. But “is it the ideal resource? No.”

To reach the Arctic from Juneau, Garrett noted, the Aiviq will have to regularly cross the same storm-swept stretch of the Gulf of Alaska where it once lost the Kulluk.

Lawson Brigham said he had questions about the Aiviq “since it’s our tax dollars at work,” but he granted that “it’s bringing some capability into the Coast Guard at a time when we’re awaiting whenever the shipbuilder can get the first ship out, which is still unknown.”

Zukunft, who retired in 2018, stands by his past opposition to the Aiviq.

“I remain unconvinced,” he wrote in response to questions from ProPublica, that it “meets the operational requirements and design of a polar icebreaker that have been thoroughly documented by the Coast Guard.” By acquiring the Aiviq, “the Coast Guard runs the risk that those requirements can be compromised.”

The American acquisition system is broken. In case you haven’t noticed.

https://news.usni.org/2025/01/20/report-to-congress-on-u-s-air-force-next-generation-air-dominance-fighter

 
Email me at cgpodcast@pm.me

NGAD is DOA: The Air Force Continues to Fail

ngad2

Sandboxx does a terrific overview of the problems inherent in this. While I have beaten the drum on the inherent challenges of emerging problems in Revolutions in Military Affairs throughout the 21st century, no one at the Pentagon is paying attention as they leap onto an acquisition merry-go-round that creates more problems than solutions.

NGAD is Next Generation Air Dominance.

Here’s the bottom line: in this era, the time of the manned combat aircraft has ended.

Hollings makes a compelling case.

CW Lemoine does a terrific overview of these problems also.

Per Mr. Lemoine’s observation, “clean sheet designs” have become impossible under the US defense acquisition regime.

More of the same.

U.S. Air Force officials paused a planned contract award for the Next-Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) to rethink the aircraft’s requirements. NGAD is an advanced fighter jet intended to replace the stealthy F-22 Raptor (see Figure 1). According to the Air Force, NGAD is also a “family of systems,” enabling air superiority, defined as the ability to operate without threat of attack, even in highly contested environments. The NGAD family or system of systems includes the NGAD fighter program, as well as the Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) program to develop variants of uncrewed, semiautonomous aircraft that could fly as “loyal wingmen” with the NGAD fighter or other fighter aircraft. (See CRS In Focus IF12740, U.S. Air Force Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA).) The Biden Administration requested $2.75 billion for research and development for an Air Force NGAD platform and $557 million for CCA in FY2025. Congress may decide to accept, reject, or modify this request.

https://news.usni.org/2025/01/20/report-to-congress-on-u-s-air-force-next-generation-air-dominance-fighter

 
Email me at cgpodcast@pm.me
 
Anti-War Blog – They Are Not People

Anti-War Blog – They Are Not People

She looks up and pleads for mercy. Then the drone operator makes the decision to kill her.

We get to see the life and death of war, the intimate terror as the mostly young are killed on the battlefield. Social media accounts share the misery with pornographic delight, the human beings in fear and pain who die are props or disregarded as objects. For a gaming addicted online world, maybe they are just seen as NPC’s.

If they are a Ukrainian, then some take glee at the thought of their destruction as though it is a slight against their government or Western foreign policy itself. If it’s a Russian then the soldiers may as well be a flesh and blood effigy of Putin. It seems that put simply they are not people. The woman killed, likely a press ganged Russian prisoner serving on the front line to commute her sentence. She can only watch as the machine kills her. We have seen other soldiers begging, praying and some defiantly swatting at the machines. The cheap drones are easier to make than human beings.

In another clip a young Russian soldier hides behind a tree, the drones find her. One watches her while another hunts her down. She runs, fires her weapon then the drone explodes. The shrapnel tearing her down. Fellow soldiers come to her aid. From high above the drone operator watches as they tend to her wounds. Minutes pass as she lays in pain while her comrades do what they can. Another killer drone strikes. Death.

The comments speculate and celebrate the deaths. Others articulate with autistic clarifications that no one asked for. Others stream in with indifferent sloganeering, disdainful and politically charged. Then putrid words of a generation fed on memes, gaming, it’s all funny to them. Now that we see women soldiers dying, the “equal rights and equal lefts,”spew onto the screen. It’s entertaining. The dystopian realities of nightmares that were once fiction are on our screens and for those in distant lands it’s their day to day and night by night.

We are all in the city now, watching with deplorable voyeurism those distant die and fight. Online for many war is The Hunger Games. Those who adore government cheer for the policies that fund mass murder, the orgies of death that snatch generations and communities and now through our screens we watch or pretend it isn’t happening. Some excited and thrilled by what they see others moan about their mental health, while wanting more more more. They just won’t watch what they support.

Western Values…

The mantra churns on that for some reason a set of dignities and honourable conduct permeates from only the West, it is in the Western man that a set of values exist. And here we witness many Westerners online cheer for the death of innocent people because they are Palestinian. Eagerly calling for a genocide of an entire population because they are Jews. And, as we see in the Ukraine-Russian war Western domestic politics infects the thinking and sense of human decency. The combatants are proxies not for national foreign policy, rather it seems at times for domestic politics.

To kill surrendering soldiers, is often at least imagined to be a wrong. Whether it was universally observed or not matters little, the belief that it was and should be viewed as wrong is understood and yet as we see from the drones perspective, if they are Russian, Ukrainian or Palestinian or Israeli, whatever ones bigotry decides then they should be killed. Even if unarmed and surrendering.

So much death.”

In a late 2024 interview a Ukrainian drone operator, “Siri” wept as she was filmed in action, killing Russians from behind a screen. The twenty-two year old had not just witnessed death but she was the killer. She had only been in the army for a year and is now a veteran of the modern form of combat. The university graduate has likely killed more than just tanks or men in active combat, but those sleeping, eating, surrendering or even tending to a fallen comrade.

Though, that’s war.

The callous calculation is that we should accept that war allows for all forms of death, pain, torture and suffering. It is that special exemption when those who believe themselves to be moral can either directly or via proxy accept and tolerate great evils.

Now we can watch on with shock and indifference or excitement and sadness as the drones are perfected with greater versatility. Improving optics allow us to see the whites of the eyes of those who are about to die. Soon, we can even hear the prayers as soldiers and civilians alike beg for a reprieve. And eventually “Siri” will be obsolete, the drones will operate themselves, to kill anyone with who looks a certain way, is in a specific uniform or who is not wearing a Friend or Foe tag on them.

Killing by drones is not new, it’s now as accepted as a weapon of war as the rifle. It shall evolve and will become a device to govern, police and impose imperial policy while also to be used for crime, terror and liberation. But the rifle is not self shooting yet, drones however very soon shall be.

It’s just war. As it always has been, and always will be. The machines will learn from us, we will teach them and as those far from danger watch on with indifference or perhaps sadistic delight, maybe in time the machines will do humanity better than we have.

New WarNotes Podcast Episode is Live Monday 27 January 2025

carrierfire6
Ep 010 “Fixing Fight Club: Naval Warfare in the 21st Century”
 
In the future near-peer and peer fight, salvo competition and missiles will be the preeminent means by which one country will kinetically overwhelm the other in a fight. I discuss the way the US Navy is in an existential hazard of being woefully under-prepared to meet the threat if Western forces go toe toe with regional hegemons in the East or West.
 
Let’s anticipate the disasters now that are the Spanish in the English Channel in 1588, the British Royal Navy at Jutland in 1916, and the discovery in WWII all these battleships were not really capital ships, or had adequate armaments, yet their political dimensions compel not only their continuous construction but are the most devastating when lost.
 
The aircraft carrier has been a signature component of US naval power and prestige for more than a century. The utility has continued to diminish since the end of WWII. The tremendous disadvantage of putting so much manpower and treasure into these single use leviathan systems in the modern world of distributed missile and PGM systems, emerging near-peer & peer adversaries and concentration of power in vulnerable systems is a recipe for future disaster.
 
Housekeeping: You can find daily brain-zephyrs from me at my Substack Notes section.
 
You can find the episodes on your favorite podcast vendor.
 
Notes: https://cgpodcast.substack.com/notes
I want to thank my listeners and readers for your continuing solicitude.
 
Please leave reviews if you find the time at your podcast vendor.
 
Email me at cgpodcast@pm.me
 

Podcasts

scotthortonshow logosq

coi banner sq2@0.5x

liberty weekly thumbnail

Don't Tread on Anyone Logo

313x0w (1)

313x0w (1)

313x0w (1)

Pin It on Pinterest