(07-14-2023 10:38 AM)Attackcoog Wrote:  The Constellation could be better---but they are a massive improvement over the LCS they are really replacing. On thing I'd do is build the Constellations not constructed on the Great Lakes with the large nose sonar. That would at least mean much of the Constellation fleet would have go from fairly average ASW capabilties to quite good ASW capabililties. They also have room to be a 64 VLS cell vessel---and I suspect many of them will end up being configured that way. I think they also have 16 free standing box launchers for the Naval Strike Missile---so its really kinda like they have another 16 cells as they wont really be using many cells for anti-ship missiles. Im just happy they have moved on from the LCS.

I like what you outlined, but one thing you've overlooked is we cant build the fleet you want in a timely manner regardless of its cost. We dont have the ship yards to do it. And we certainly dont have the shipyards to build that fleet and maintain that larger fleet at the same time. We need to invest in more shipyards if we are serious about building and maintaining a larger US Navy.

I don't know why they made such big changes to the FREMMs, which are really pretty good GP frigates, unless they are viewing Constellations with AEGIS/AMDR and 32 missile cells as much less capable numerical replacements for Ticos with 122 missile cells.

As far as shipyards, started to add something about that, but decided the post had gotten long enough already. Agree 100%. The USN currently has 4 active naval shipyards, and 7 private shipyards do Navy work. On the west coast the Navy has closed the Mare Island, Hunter's Point, and Long Beach Naval Shipyards, but they have not yet been repurposed. In theory the Navy could reacquire them and rededicate them to shipyard use. On the east coast the Charleston Naval Shipyard has been sold to Detyen's, who I believe still do a lot of Navy work.

One thing you may have noted about my proposed fleet is that I have used a number of European navy ship concepts. One of my thoughts is that the European shipyards are making do on very short orders--for example France has built 8 FREMMs and Italy is supposed to be building 10 (although may eventually stop at the current 6). If the USN could promise ship runs of 20 to 30, I think the ROI would justify their doing deals like Naval Group did at Itaguai to build the Brazilian Riachuelo and nuclear subs. If for example we committed to a class of 30 Barracudas, would Naval Group have been incentivized to reopen, say, Mare Island, which has built nuke subs before. We could get Naval Group to open/reopen a yard to build Barracudas and the Mistral class amphibs. We could get HDW to open/reopen a yard to build AIP submarines, maybe Damen to build some of our amphibs, Navantia to build the Juan Carlos class LHA/LHDs, and Fincantieri to do a yard on the east or west coast to build the true FREMMs with sonars. As far as existing USA yards, let Finacintieri Marinette build the ASW corvettes (which are shallow enough draft even with sonar to get through Welland), let Austal build the patrol gunboats (based on Swedish Visby), let Bath and HII build the cruisers and ASW frigates.

We probably need, all told, another 12 shipyards to be able to build and maintain the fleet we need. If we can commit to long enough production runs, we can get them built.

GOP Lawmaker Sounds Alarm Over US Navy Plan to Relocate Fuel From Hawaii

Quote:U.S. lawmakers have sent a letter of warning to the U.S. Navy saying the country could be wholly unprepared for a possible conflict should the military follow through with a plan to move fuel from Hawaii to storage facilities across the Indo-Pacific.

Rep. Mike Gallagher, the Republican chair of the House Select Committee on China, said in a letter to Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro dated Jan. 17 that a plan to redistribute fuel from Hawaii’s Red Hill underground bulk storage facility was a “strategic imperative,” Reuters reported. He cautioned, however, that the Defense Department had yet to develop a long-term solution.

“It is unclear how exactly the Navy will replace and distribute the aggregate bulk fuel capacity of Red Hill,” said Gallagher, R-Wis, noting that U.S. operations in the Pacific would “grind to a halt” without a logistics network to ship the oil then to ensure ease of access.

“The Navy appears to be short – by several dozen – ships that will be needed to transport and deliver fuel to our bases and forces operating across the Indo-Pacific,” he continued. “We must address potential weaknesses in our logistical supply lines, while we still have the time to do so.”

In October 2023, the Pentagon revealed the Red Hill storage facility at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam suffered a leak that contaminated the water systems. It then began draining the 1940s-era facility, saying the fuel would be loaded by ship and transported to existing support sites. This process is expected to take several years.

In Gallagher’s letter, the Republican lawmaker cited a 2016 Defense Department determination that it would need 86 tankers for moving such equipment. He requested that Del Toro explain to the committee whether the department had enough forward fuel storage facilities and would have access to refinery capacity for operations in the Indo-Pacific.

Gallagher also asked the secretary whether the Navy had identified secure locations to build replacement facilities for Red Hill, and whether it had plans to integrate facilities of allies and partners in redistributing fuel.

A Navy spokesperson affirmed the secretary would respond to the letter accordingly.

Affirmative

U.S. Navy Drops High School Diploma, GED Requirement for Recruits — What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

Quote:No Diploma? No Problem! The U.S. Navy has again lowered enlistment requirements as it struggles to meet self-inflicted recruiting goals. We'll get to the latter in a bit. Spoiler: Perhaps Navy brass should have dropped Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) goals instead.

As reported by Navy Times on Friday, America's naval force will now allow those without a high school diploma to enlist as long as they score a 50 or higher on the Armed Forces Qualification Test that all prospects must take. Those without a General Educational Development (GED) will also be allowed to enlist if they hit the test threshold, according to the Chief of Naval Personnel’s office.

The Navy is not alone in its failure to hit recruiting goals.

Last fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30, the Navy, Army and Air Force all failed to meet their recruitment goals, while the Marine Corps and the tiny Space Force met their targets.

The previous fiscal year, the Army fell 15,000 short of its enlistment goal of 60,000, and the other services had to dig into the pools of delayed entry candidates in order to meet their recruiting numbers.

[T]he Navy's [2023] enlistment goal was 37,700, but the service brought in just 31,834. This year ... the goal [is] higher — at 40,600. The total size of the Navy for 2024 is set at 337,800.

While multiple issues are likely responsible for the U.S. military recruiting crisis, Shillman Journalism Fellow Daniel Greenfield believes there's one culprit in particular.

The military is in the midst of a self-inflicted recruitment crisis.

As I wrote earlier, new data showed that the Army’s recruitment crisis was almost entirely caused by a drop in white recruits and a woke brass chasing DEI and diversity at the expense of national security. There are good odds that the Navy has the same issues and that its recruiting crisis could be fixed if the service, which is even more woke than the Army, stopped playing political games.

So the Navy is dealing with that by dropping standards even further. And I don’t just mean with its ‘drag queen ambassador’ but by tossing out a GED or high school diploma requirement.

Lowering standards had been recommended to the military brass in order to improve diversity metrics. As was ignoring criminal records and other issues. Expect those to show up on the agenda soon enough.

The Navy could drop DEI or drop its standards. It’s choosing to drop standards.

Greenfield was right. As the Heritage Foundation opined in a December 2023 article: "The military went woke. Time to make some changes at the top." (Emphasis, mine.)

Today's American military has fully embraced the social imperatives of the Left and the most progressive aspects of American society.

The U.S. Air Force selects officers based on a race- and sex-based quota system for officer applicants—an affirmative action program that would make the Ivy League blush.

In August, the U.S. Army Special Operations Command released a report on “Women in Combat”—not to analyze the effectiveness of Army Special Operations Forces, but to excoriate itself for supposed persistent bigotry.

Earlier this year, Army officials released a memo making soldiers undergoing “gender transition” non-deployable for almost one year. At a time of severe readiness concerns, such a concession to ideology is absurd. The military should not be in the business of accommodating social ideology if it means accepting non-deployability.

Each of these examples, and countless others, embody the faulty assumption that the military must reflect the society it is built to protect.

A fighting force that rejects the above observations will sooner or later get its ass kicked on the battlefield and the high seas.

"If the nation is to reclaim the military as an institution built for victory in war," the Heritage Foundation advised, "conservatives must have the courage and audacity to reform the institution, starting at the top, with uniformed leadership."

Amen to the hell yeah.

The Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations
So what — or whom — is to blame for declining educational standards in America? Here's a hint:

In October 2023, Oregon became the latest Democrat-run state to drop virtually all high school graduation requirements, including basic reading, writing, and math skills. I'd ask, "Why the hell even bother with high school, then?" — but I don't want to get off-track.

Oregon’s State Board of Education voted unanimously, arguing that requiring students to complete standardized tests both presented a “harmful hurdle for historically marginalized students” and represented a misuse of state tests. The reason? COVID-19. Please don't insult our intelligence.

While Oregon isn't the only state "guilty" of lowering high school graduation requirements, it does serve as a perfect example of the insanity of "the soft bigotry of low expectations."

The Bottom Line
Lowered educational standards for all students — vs. raising the effectiveness of properly educating those who struggle — is not only a black mark on those who lower those standards; lowered standards then metastasize into the whole of society, slowly but surely.

The United States Armed Forces is presently a perfect example of the latter.

Embarrassing: US Navy Publicity Photo Shows Optical Sight Mounted Backward

Quote:What happened to ordinary competence?

When I was in the Army, in the last years of the Cold War, we were all constantly admonished to be, at all times, technically and tactically proficient. That meant being able to use the tools we were assigned to use and to carry out the tasks we were assigned to carry out; to further the Army's ultimate purpose of closing with and destroying the enemy by fire, maneuver, and shock effect. Much of this, of course, meant proficiency with our issue weapon, which for me at various times was either the M16A1 rifle or the 1911 or M9 pistols. Every time I drew my weapon from the armory for a field problem or a day at the range, the first thing I did — like everyone else — was to inspect it to make sure it was in working order.

This is something that U.S. Navy Commander Cameron Yast of the USS John S. McCain clearly failed to do during a recent live-fire exercise.

The commander of a US Navy warship is apparently a not-so-sharpshooter.

A commanding officer of the USS John S. McCain, an Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer, was mocked online after he was photographed holding an assault weapon with its scope mounted backward as he took aim at a target known as a “killer tomato.”

Cmdr. Cameron Yast “observes the live-fire exercise event. The ship is in U.S. 7th Fleet conducting routine operations,” read a caption posted by Defense Visual Information Distribution Service alongside an image of him holding up the weapon with the Trijicon VCOG installed backward while pointed at a large target balloon.

Have a look:



Note that there is brass in the air. Commander Yast is actually firing the weapon while looking through an optical sight that is, embarrassingly, mounted backward. This begs the question: Has he ever even seen this sight before?

Anyone who is even remotely familiar with the use of a sight like this — no, strike that, anyone who is even remotely familiar with any kind of optical device at all — would immediately notice something is wrong here. But Commander Yast was either painfully unfamiliar with the U.S. Military's primary service rifle, or he realized something was wrong but proceeded anyway, to the embarrassment of himself, his ship, and the United States Navy.

In 1941, during the attack on Pearl Harbor, a ship's cook on the USS West Virginia, Doris Miller, was below decks in the ship's laundry when bombs started dropping. As the Navy at that time only employed black men as cooks and laundry attendants, he was not trained with any weapons, and yet when the attack came, he ran onto the deck, hauled ammo, and moved wounded sailors to cover until the ship's Captain was killed. Miller then, with no training, manned a .50 caliber Browning anti-aircraft gun and returned fire until he was ordered to abandon ship. Miller became the first black sailor to be awarded the Navy Cross for his work that day.

Now compare that act of heroism to an officer, a U.S. Navy Commander, being photographed for a U.S. Navy promotional photo with a sight mounted backward. This is not the sign of a serviceman who is technically and tactically proficient. Frankly, it's embarrassing.

Add this to the growling list of indicators that our military leadership needs a serious overhaul and that the services need to focus once more on their core mission: to close with and destroy the enemy by fire, maneuver, and shock effect.

Yeah, but I bet he is fluent in proper pronouns.

(04-10-2024 12:29 PM)oruvoice Wrote:  Yeah, but I bet he is fluent in proper pronouns.

Well, the reversed scope tells you everything you need to know about our current military situation, tunnel vision. Obviously, he was so accustomed to it he thought the field of vision the backwards scope gave him was normal.

My Dad is turning over and over and over in his grave.

Is that his boyfriends hand on his shoulder while he is target shooting




Clowns