The US Navy surface fleet continues to shrink.
And every surface hull commissioned after the Arleigh Burke class in 1991 has been a failure.
The Chinese Navy exceeds the US Navy in total warships deployed. What makes this even more astonishing is that the Chinese maintain a regional naval power with optional blue water projection capabilities (mind you, untested) while the US maintains the fiction of a global capability. The current U.S. fleet is smaller, with more than 280 vessels. The Secretary of the Navy expects that strength to reach 300 in the early 2030s which is a pipe dream unsupported by the facts on the ground..
The Pentagon’s 2023 China Military Power Report said China’s navy had about 370 warships. The fleet is expected to grow to 395 ships by 2025 and 435 ships by 2030.
This document provides a deep dive (the executive summary on pages 2-13 will make your hair stand on end).
All Ticonderoga cruisers will be retired from the fleet in 2027 due to a variety of factors to include aging hulls, the inability to properly upgrade and maintain sophisticated sensor & weapons systems, a personnel competency crisis and the chaos avalanche of restricted shipbuilding and maintenance throughput at limited shipyards nation-wide. The first five ships were decommissioned awhile ago and the remaining 13 are being decommissioned. The youngest ship is 31 years old.
In the 21st century, the US Navy surface fleet will go down in history as very expensive target barges.
As they were initially intended to be destroyers, these ships were designed around a destroyer hull. But new weapons and combat systems give them a distinctly different look from their predecessors.
These ships brought a major upgrade in electronic warfare capabilities. They introduced the AEGIS radar system, the first of its kind able to track, target, and shoot multiple targets simultaneously. Mounting this radar on an older frame necessitated two large superstructures, one forward and one aft, giving the cruisers their boxy silhouette. Additionally, the ships mount two Mk 41 vertical launch systems (VLS) with a total capacity of 122 missiles. These systems reduce manpower requirements from previous missile launchers as well as providing added flexibility to arm diverse munitions, from TLAMs to SM-6s.
With twin 5-inch guns, one forward and one aft, the Ticonderogas are some of the only ships in the fleet – alongside the ill-fated Zumwalt – to field two guns.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/farewell-ticonderoga-class-cruiser-pillar-us-naval-power-211740
These ships are a critical part of the defending the carrier armadas once underway and the remaining Arleigh Burke destroyers will step in but simply don’t have the capacity nor capabilities.
In the end, these are Cold War relics but then again, the entire US Navy surface fleet is a Cold War entity designed for naval warfare that is a thing of the past and simply floating missile sponges in the future.
What will replace them? Allegedly, the new FFG62 Constellation-class future DDG(X), a new guided missile destroyer that will only have 96 missile silos, compared to the Ticonderoga’s 122. Don’t hold your breath for success in that endeavor.
Decommissioning is not cheap (of course it isn’t):
To illustrate the financial toll of maintaining even a decommissioned ship, consider the fate of the first guided-missile cruiser of this class, the Ticonderoga itself. Decommissioned in 2004, the ship was offered to various museums in 2010 but none was interested in taking the cruiser in. Consequently, it was handed over for disposal in 2020.
https://en.defence-ua.com/analysis/how_to_make_use_of_the_12_ticonderoga_cruisers_usa_is_decommissioning-11116.html
Email me at cgpodcast@pm.me.
