(11-18-2021 11:37 PM)BigTigerMike Wrote:
Lots of food for thought there.
The part about reading between the lines of the incident reports is interesting. There is a very strong rumor that on one of the destroyers that got hit by a merchant, either McCain or Fitzgerald, don't remember which, the OOD (in charge of driving the ship) and the CIC Watch Officer (in charge of the ship's information center) were two female officers who were involved in some sort of lovers' triangle dispute and were not speaking to each other. They should be talking back and forth extensively any time another ship gets anywhere close, but didn't say anything to each other until there was a collision.
In addition to those two, the Port Royal, a Ticonderoga class cruiser, ran aground right in front of Honolulu Airport in broad daylight. Two other Ticos, the Lake Champlain hit a Korean fishing boat and the Antietam ran aground off the coast of Japan. Fitzgerald, McCain, and the Ticos are all equipped with the newest and most sophisticated AEGIS radar systems.
And of course, the Bonhomme Richard burned down at the pier because the Navy couldn't put out the fire.
These events are all indicative of poorly trained watchstanders and other personnel. A part of the problem is that the Navy doesn't have enough ships to cover all its commitments, so ships and sailors spend a bigger part of their time on deployments, leaving less time for training and maintenance. In the 1980s we had between 500 and 600 ships, and we kept around 100 deployed for various commitments, so you were deployed about 15-20% of the time, and had 80-85% of the time for training and maintenance. Today we have about 250-300 ships, but are still trying to keep 100+ deployed for various commitments. That's 35-40% of the time deployed and 60-65% of the time for training and maintenance, and that's simply not proving to be enough.
And a lot of that training is now taken up not on seamanship and professional craft but on woke diversity, inclusion, and equity (D-I-E, because that's what happens to you) training. Sailors may not know how to drive ships or put out fires, but they know how to sing Kumbaya.
Here's what I'd do:
1) Build back up to 600 ships so we can cover commitments with less strain. I've already outlined my concept of a 600-ship fleet:
-12 carrier battle groups (CVBGs) each with a nuclear carrier, a smaller conventional carrier, and 10 surface ship escorts
-8 surface action/hunter-killer groups (SAG/HUK), each with a battleship and a ASW helicopter carrier and 10 surface ship escorts
-10 amphibious squadrons/amphibious ready groups (PhibRons/ARGs), each with 6 smaller and cheaper conventional amphibious ships, and convert the existing LHAs/LHDs to some of those small carriers and the existing LPDs to anti-ballistic missile ships
-12 ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs), 20 guided missile submarines (SSGNs), and 60 nuclear attack submarines (SSNs),
-120 littoral combatants, including 30 ASW corvettes, 30 missile patrol boats, 30 mine countermeasures ships, and 30 AIP patrol submarines (SSKs)
-Enough auxiliary and support ships to support the missions of all of the above
By following ADM Zumwalt's high/low mix approach of building some of the ferociously expensive gold plated ships that the USN wants to build and filling out the numbers with cheaper single-purpose ships, I would cut the estimated cost per ship in half, from $2.8B to $1.4B, and could therefore build 600 ships for the same $840B that the USN's proposed 300 new ships will cost.
2) Get our allies to cover some of what have previously been our commitments. We already have the Quad alliance (India, Japan, Australia, USA) in the Pacific. India can cover a lot of our commitments in the Indian Ocean (and they hate the Chinese more than we do), and Japan and Australia (who also hate the Chinese) can cover some of our WestPac commitments. The AUKUS submarine deal may be a step in the right direction, but I am not sure that nuke subs are what the Aussies need. They don't have any domestic nuclear industry or infrastructure to support nuke subs, and I think they'd be better served by long-range AIP conventional subs. I think there is a work-around to get them what they really need (something like the German Type 216s) and also help us grow our nubmers (with 216s for our SSKs) and get the French to settle down (buying a bunch of cheaper French Barracuda-class nukes instead of spending a fortune on larger Virginia replacement that the USN wants). There is also a proposed CANZUK (Canada, Australia, New Zealand, UK) alliance as a response to China and Brexit. I think we should do all that we can to encourage that, including some sort of possible associate membership. In the long run, maybe we go for some sort of associate membership in the Commonwealth as a whole. If we put together an alliance with the Quad and the Commonwealth (or CANZUK if not the entire Commonwealth), then UK (2 carriers) could cover a lot of our commitments in the European/NATO area, India (2 carriers and building) could cover a lot of our Indian Ocean commitments, Australia and Japan (4-6 possible jump-jet carriers between them) could cover a lot of our WestPac commitments. In particular, if we brought the whole Commonwealth onboard, Malaysia and Singapore could pretty much give China all it could handle in the Malacca/Sunda Straits area (where the vast majority of China's exports and all of its oil imports must transit). Australia apparently has the goal of replicating China's A2/AD (anti-access/area denial) system to protect its northern flanks (not too worried about threats from New Zealand or Antarctica, but if you want to know a bit more about how much they worry about Asian threats, look up "ten pound poms" and do a little research). Such a system would not only protect Australia, but would constitute a major threat to China's access to the Malacca/Sunda Straits.
What do we have to do to make these things happen? Basically, decide to win Cold War II the same way we won Cold War I. Truman bribed up an alliance to stop Russian expansion further into Europe, and Reagan turned up the heat on their economy to bring the Evil Empire to its knees. We need to promise the same kinds of economic cooperation and mutual military protection to the Quad, CANZUK, and Commonwealth countries that we did to Europe after WWII. Move as much as we can of the manufacturing base that we have exported to China either back home or to our allies. Even better if we bring folks like Indonesia, the Philippines, and possibly even Taiwan into the deal. Then turn up the economic heat on China.
China has a much healthier economy that the Soviets did, at least on the surface. But there are huge problems underneath. Historically, China has seldom been a unified country because it's basically a bunch of people who don't like each other. The warlike Han in the north don't get along well with the commercial/industrial Shanghai and the Yangtze Valley, and neither of them like or are liked by the secessionist south, not to mention Tibet and the Uyghurs in the west. So what they do is export a lot of cheap consumer goods and use the cash flow to finance a bunch of make-work projects with little or no economic utility (remember the empty cities) to keep the peons too busy to revolt. So their banks have massive loans out to deals that will never generate a nickel of revenue. And the whole thing depends on imported oil from the Mideast, that has to come by sea through Malacca/Sunda, and PLAN (the Chinese navy) may be huge in numbers, but it is not a blue-water navy that can protect that shipping. We do that for them now. Pull the USN out of the Indian Ocean, and let pirates start hijacking tankers bound for China, and the whole thing collapses--their economy dies and their people starve to death. We hold all the cards, but we refuse to play them.