The US Navy may credibly dominate the Atlantic but the Pacific Ocean is no longer an exclusive US naval domination calculus.
The Arctic is still dominated by the Russians and will remain so.
The US Navy’s ability to build functioning surface ships is compromised beyond repair due to a lack of proper planning, enormous maintenance backlogs, and global “commitments” taking the remaining surface fleet endlessly steaming circles in hulls with limited lifespans.
Do hulls have an expiration date? Yes, they do hence the Navy retiring all 22 remaining cruisers in the fleet by 2027.
Not to mention the premature retirement of the entire class of Little Crappy Ships (LCS).
Along with Vicksburg, the Navy wants to decommission USS Bunker Hill (CG-52), USS Mobile Bay (CG-53), USS San Jacinto (CG-56) and USS Lake Champlain (CG-57) in FY 2023 and is already cleared to decommission USS Monterey (CG-61), USS Hué City (CG-66), USS Anzio (CG-68), USS Vella Gulf (CG-72) and USS Port Royal (CG-73) this year.
All 22 remaining cruisers are set to leave the fleet by 2027.
https://news.usni.org/2022/04/21/navy-plans-for-all-22-ticonderoga-cruisers-to-exit-fleet-in-5-years
The perfect storm of inadequate design since 1991 for all new US Navy surface warfare vessels, inadequate maintenance funds and insufficient shipyard throughput is reaching a point of no return. The era of US Navy surface superiority and supremacy planet-wide is over.
Three Los Angeles-class submarines, two Ticonderoga-class cruisers and four mine-detection ships have passed their expected service life dates and are among the 19 ships targeted for retirement by the Navy. However, the other 10 that the Navy wants to remove from the fleet are still short of retirement age. The gaps range from one and two years for two more Ticonderoga-class cruisers to 29 years for USNS John Glenn, an expeditionary land dock vessel only 11 years into its expected 40-year service.
More here:
https://www.stripes.com/branches/navy/2024-03-18/navy-budget-ships-submarines-f-35s-retirements-cuts-13358793.html
One of the commenters made this keen point:
One of the basic criteria in successful shipbuilding is you do not commence build until design is 100% complete, not 90 or 95% , as nearly always the the last few percent of the design the most difficult, but Navy authorized F/MM start build in August 2022 even though they said the detail design was only just over 80 percent finished. Congress had previously mandated in 2020 that design must be “complete” before build can commence, as the Navy doesn’t understand the meaning of the word “complete” in the FY2025 NDAA House legislators were said to be changing the wording to “100% complete”, though Senate draft wording reported to be 95% of functional design drawings have to been approved.
No wonder Constellation expected delivery will be three years late and 10 percent above the shipbuilder’s June 2020 weight estimate.
You cannot complete a complex ship design of the plans aren’t complete on initiation of building.
Period.
In contrast, because the Navy no longer designs ships, generates blueprints, or even requires complete designs and blueprints prior to the start of construction, only the contracted yard can build a given ship. The LCS is the standout example of this badly flawed approach. Lacking any guidance or blueprints, both Lockheed and Austal generated their own LCS designs, spec’ed their own equipment and combat systems, and no one else could build them. Thus, we wound up with two LCS classes that had almost nothing in common; the epitome of inefficiency.
What should have happened is that the Navy should have generated a complete design concept – and locked it down instead of continuously changing it! – followed by a complete set of construction blueprints. They could have then shopped around for the best manufacturing deal and, if necessary, utilized multiple shipyards to in competition to ensure that costs and quality were well controlled.
https://navy-matters.blogspot.com/2024/07/efficiency-and-competition.html
Email me at cgpodcast@pm.me.
