Why Romney’s Right: Many Cheap Ships Safer Than Few Expensive Ones
Barack Obama lost the debate in Boca Raton last night. It must have been the altitude.
The president patronized, interrupted, and mocked Republican challenger Mitt Romney throughout the night. In return, Romney acted presidential, and may have put this election away.
A key moment of the night in this final policy debate was a set-piece zinger by the president as the candidates discussed military spending:
Romney: Our Navy is older — excuse me — our Navy is smaller now than any time since 1917. The Navy said they needed 313 ships to carry out their mission. We’re now down to 285. We’re headed down to the — to the low 200s if we go through with sequestration. That’s unacceptable to me. I want to make sure that we have the ships that are required by our Navy.
Our Air Force is older and smaller than any time since it was founded in 1947. We’ve changed for the first time since FDR. We — since FDR we had the — we’ve always had the strategy of saying we could fight in two conflicts at once. Now we’re changing to one conflict.
Look, this, in my view, is the highest responsibility of the president of the United States, which is to maintain the safety of the American people. And I will not cut our military budget by a trillion dollars, which is the combination of the budget cuts that the president has as well as the sequestration cuts. That, in my view, is — is — is making our future less certain and less secure. I won’t do it.
Obama: Bob, I just need to comment on this. First of all, the sequester is not something that I proposed. It’s something that Congress has proposed. It will not happen. The budget that we’re talking about is not reducing our military spending. It’s maintaining it.
But I think Governor Romney maybe hasn’t spent enough time looking at how our military works. You — you mentioned the Navy, for example, and that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets — (laughter) — because the nature of our military’s changed. We have these things called aircraft carriers where planes land on them. We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines.
And so the question is not a game of Battleship where we’re counting ships. It’s — it’s what are our capabilities.
Historian Tim Stanley covered the exchange for the UK’s Telegraph, and was not impressed:
The candidates were discussing military spending and Romney had just accused Obama of making harmful cutbacks. The president wheeled out what must have seemed like a great, pre-planned zinger: “I think Governor Romney maybe hasn’t spent enough time looking at how our military works. You mentioned the navy, for example, and that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well, governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets because the nature of our military’s changed.” The audience laughed, Obama laughed, I laughed. It was funny.
But here’s why it was also a vote loser. For a start, Twitter immediately lit up with examples of how the U.S. Army does still use horses and bayonets (horses were used during the invasion of Afghanistan). More importantly, this was one example of many in which the president insulted, patronized, and mocked his opponent rather than put across a constructive argument.
Stanley’s analysis was similar to post-debate observations by political columnist Charles Krauthammer, who noted: ”Romney went large. Obama went very, very small — shockingly small.” Both men were correct in their observations that Romney won the debate.
But what was most fascinating: the American media, so obviously biased in favor of Obama, looked at this same exchange on “how our military works” and gave the victory to the president. They can only do so from a position of ignorance.
When I was in the Navy we called aircraft carriers ‘targets’. Each ‘target’ had a fleet of smaller ships surrounding it for protection.
Each theater of batte is different but Obama’s snarky comment displays his ignorance of warfare.
He needs to go back to community organizing.
Eric, you make a very good point. Someone whose professional life consisted of community organizing, absolutely knows little about military requirements. And, a Radical-in-Chief who tasks his surrogates to deconstruct the U.S. as a hyper-power, surely has no use for military excellence.
In effect, everything the Islamist-in-Chief touches is meant to destroy U.S. interests, starting with the military, and onward to all other patriotic efforts – http://adinakutnicki.com/2012/10/01/u-s-heroes-are-targeted-under-the-thuggish-reign-of-barack-hussein-obama-addendum-to-lt-colonel-lakin-a-hero-a-role-model-commentary-by-adina-kutnicki/
The deconstruction of the U.S. is the transformation he promised 4 yrs ago. We can only hope that his reign of anti-American terror comes to a screeching halt!
Not to wander off topic, but his knowledge of everything is nonexistent. To me, the most cringeworthy moment of the whole debate was when he said that the private sector doesn’t fund R&D and never did.
I’ll spare you the profane long explanation and just quote Wolfgang Pauli: “that was not even wrong”.
I have 0 military experience or knowledge but common sense dictates that putting all your eggs in one basket is foolish. Those carrier groups get annihilated by sophisticated missles then what? If we ever have a serious war and we lose our initial hardware then what? What will we mass produce if necessary? Somethng tells me you can’t build these carriers quickly and easily.
The Navy is working a plan that is over 100 years old. It is that old because it worked.
Capital Ships, Carriers, Battleships, certain types of cruisers take years to build. Destroyers, Frigate, Patrol craft can be mass produced and built in months. So the Plan developed by Teddy ( Roosevelt) was to build battleships, knowing that the support ships could be cranked out if needed during a war.
Battleships were replaced by carriers but that didn’t really change the plan. IIRC, it takes 6 to 8 years to build a carrier. 3 to 4 years to build a Tico class cruiser, about the same for an Aegis class destroyer.
So in theory, the purpose of the existing navy is to hold the line long enough for America to crank out a new fleet. Several new fleets.
Now to correct a small fallacy. Aircraft Carriers are tough. The last time one got nuked it didn’t sink. That is correct. There are few things that have been proven to survive a nuclear explosion. One of them is a fleet carrier.
Carriers only get sunk in wargames. Wargames are rigged even more then Presidential debates.
NO, the plan is good. The question is if the plan is applicable given nuclear weapons.
One theory is that a mass exchange of nuclear weapons will destroy all the combatants. No data supports that theory. Most evidence is against it. Hiroshima in 2007 had a population of 1.6 million.
Another theory is that a mass exchange will destroy communication centers to the point where government is non-existent. That was the DARPA theory behind taking the Xerox packet protocol and expanding it to cover the USA. Given safe communications, the USA would survive a nuclear exchange. Or at least the Government would. The government only cares about itself. Citizens will breed back. As the song says; “Do What you Do”.
Then there is the military version of “Footprint”. That is how much of the surrounding area a military unit can control. Control meaning denying access to the enemy and being able to protect allies. A CVBG ( Aircraft Carrier Battle Group) controls an enormous amount of space. As a bonus you get persistence, which is the ability to control an area for a length of time.
No, if you want to talk about wasting money one needs to look at the DD1000 farce.
But weapons can be too expensive and then the strategy has to be protect the weapon instead of attack the enemy. Read about the Yamato.
When was an American aircraft carrier attacked with a nuclear weapon?
It was a test, and it was something less (a lot less) than a direct hit.
So, he made an interesting comment, but not really relevant.
Bikini Atoll test;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Crossroads
Scroll down and you will get a list of the target ships and a map. The ranges are listed. The map shows relative position.
Mark I never claimed a direct hit, although I’m not exactly sure what the difference between a direct hit, a hit and a near miss is when nukes are involved. Do you?
I don’t have any quibbles with your overarching ideas, but there’s one thing you’re forgetting. The smaller ships are needed for commerce protection. Destroyers right now are way too high tech and just plain too big for that kind of thing. Concentration of power is great in war-fighting, but not so great when patrolling the sea lanes.
Who would’ve thought just a few years ago that piracy would be on the upswing? The success of the Somalians will inspire imitators if it is not stopped hard. While it may be Obama’s policy to cede that necessary work to others, especially the Chinese, there is one major difference between the USA and China: China will protect their own ships, but not necessarily those of anyone else. The USA would go to bat for anybody, even enemies, against pirates. What we need are a whole lot of small ships that can patrol independently and keep the sea lanes clear. Otherwise we risk ‘every nation for itself’ at sea, and it’s a short step from that to proxy wars and privateers. A container ship today is worth more than any Spanish treasure-galleon ever dreamed, and there are plenty of bad actors in the world who would be thrilled to be able to pluck such plums if they could get away with it. The problem with reducing our navy to essentially capital ships and escorts and very little more, is that our only option in such a case would be war. Frigates or cutters killing pirates and keeping rogue nations on their toes is a much better solution than bombing the hell out of whole nations after they piss us off.
Hear! Hear!
Well said. We need a VARIETY of force projection.
For the pirates, bring back a modern version of the old PT boats. With modern armaments, armor, and electronics, that size factor would be a formidable weapon against such activities.
The “destroyers” of today are bigger than some WWII cruisers. They are very fancy with lots of tech, but that might be a problem. As I understand it, most of it is wired together and accessible via satellite internet connections. I also read something about intergroup communications having switched to digital satellite relay rather than analog short range radios. The point being if it is linked to the net it can be hacked. A virus in the weapons control or radar systems could leave them wide open to attack once those big, expensive missiles were put out of action.
I’m sorry, did you read the linked Wiki article on Operation Crossroads? Your depiction of events is far off base.
First we must note that this was not an attempt to recreate a battle situation. Ships were anchored at concentrations “three to five times greater than military doctrine would allow.” They were not fully loaded with fuel, oil, and munitions, despite General LeMay’s request.
The first shot (“Able”) was an air burst detonation at 520 feet. The warhead detonated 710 yards (2,130 feet, over one-third mile) west-northwest of the aiming point. Turns out a stabilizer on the bomb was defective. This resulted in Saratoga being 2,265 yards (6,795 feet) away from the center of the blast. That is, the carrier was 1.287 miles away from the blast. Even then, with only sample amounts of fuel, oil, and ammo on board, Sara suffered “serious damage … from the blast, … due to fire.”
“Baker,” on the other hand, was detonated 90 feet under water. Saratoga was 450 yards (1,350 feet) from the blast this time.
The ship was also drenched with radioactive water. Admiral Blandy wanted to tow her to Enyu for beaching, but she was too radioactive to approach until after she sank.
In summary, a carrier not specifically targeted for attack suffered significant fire damage from nuke air burst over a mile away. The same carrier -again not specifically targeted- was about a quarter-mile away from an underwater burst which lifted the ship 29 to 43 feet, washed all aircraft on-deck overboard, and knocked over the stack.
“Surviving,” perhaps, but not much use afterwards. And that’s when they weren’t aiming at the bloody thing.
In addition to aircraft carriers (really oughta be called aircraft “launchers”), the Navy provides transportation to fleet Marines in Marine Expeditionary Units.
The MEUs are designed to be able to bring significant firepower anywhere in the world in 24 hours. That includes air power and a battalion of Special Operations capable Marines, along with everything they need for battle for one month including, but not limited to, bayonets.
TheOne is clueless. He was projected to get about 20% of the military vote before this debate. My guess is about 2%.
You know what that frigate sitting to the port and starboard side about 1-2 miles from the carrier is? A target. Her job is to take hits meant for the carrier. Jammers, decoys, and maneuvers to protect the carrier. Take a missile in the face if she has to. Die with all hands if it comes to it. And they know it.
Read “The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors” sometime. You’ll know heroes by name and deed.
http://www.bing.com/search?q=the+charge+of+taffy+three&form=IE8SRC&src=IE-SearchBox
One billion, thirty million hits –
Though I am often affronted by Obama’s personality – his snarky, supercilious, I-am-an-intellect-and-you-are-a-pleb attitude – in this matter, he has a point. After four years as C-in-C, he surely must have gleaned more knowledge of military affairs than a community organiser would initially have.
Though Romney did not mention ‘battleships’ – he only spoke of the “number” of ships – he would done better to have been aware of where exactly the Navy cuts were being made.
The almost mystical aura of power that battleships once had was shot to pieces in WW2. First, Britain’s Royal Navy lost its mightiest ship, the Hood, in just 7 minutes of battle, the German Kriegsmarine lost both its vaunted new generation of battleships, the Bismarck and the Tirpitz. The US Navy saw its proud battleships go belly-up in one fell swoop at Pearl Harbour.
It was one of those strokes of good fortune in war-time that its carriers were spared the same fate. And those carriers went on to win the Pacific War.
Once, battleships were the fists of mail of any navy. Later, during the Cold War, crrier groups took over. Large capital ships went into relative decline, replaced by smaller and faster destroyers, missile boats and anti-missile boats and other elements of the carrier group. Just as large standing armies proved to be cost-ineffective, so too large battleships.
The days when a large muscular battleship sailed off alone to take on all comers in the open ocean are long over.
Rumsfeld developed a strategic plan for a smaller, faster and deadlier land army. Romney and his SecDef must do the same for the navy.
WTF are you talking about?
Nobody mentioned battleships at the debate. Are you arguing against the Romney that lives in your brain versus the one that lives in meatspace?
We live in an era where technology drives up the cost of ships and aircraft to the point where we can’t afford to buy very many of them. An aircraft carrier now costs about $10 billion. A destroyer can easily cost more than a billion dollars. An F-22 costs over $160 million and the full price of an F-35 is pushing towards $100 million. The same applies to satellites and other military systems. The capabilities are amazing but with prices so high, we can’t buy many of them.
When you have few weapons with very high capabilities, you create juicy targets. We’re leveraging our technical capabilities so that an Army brigade is able to take on a conventional division. When that happens, the technology that enables those advantages becomes a target for negation.
It’s true that we need advanced weapons because we can’t always expect to fight the last war. The next war (and there’s always a next war) could just as easily be against a technically capable enemy with modern air defenses, making UAV operations difficult. Cyber warfare will target our systems. In that scenario, quantity as a quality all its own and the ability to go “old school” can be a lifesaver. GPS is a wonderful system that allows all sorts of things but that makes the system attractive for targeting, either by jamming or by other means.
Splitting capabilities between aircraft or ships means each one doesn’t have to be able to do everything. This can allow for smaller, less expensive systems so we can have more of them. There was an old study that showed by 2050, the US military could only afford a single fighter plane. The Air Force would get to fly it on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. The Navy and Marines would get to fly it on other days. We don’t want to go that way.
Public funding drives up the cost of ships and aircraft more than technology. Procurement rules written to protect against stealing mean that only the very best theives can steal. Like the very best of anything, the very best theives are very expensive. Building everything in a monopoly, government approved factory or shipyard, requiring virtually 100% American content, Davis-Bacon or better wages, union project labor agreements, bleeding edge environmental controls both in the factories and in the product itself. In sum, it isn’t just the high tech, maybe it isn’t even the high tech, that drives up the costs. I’ve been a part of buying and bringing to operation three fairly large Jones Act ships; the government, the unions, and the environmentalists have thought of an awful lot of ways to make them more expensive.
I’m not condemning qualitative superiority; I think a democracy must have qualitative superiority because at some point the mothers stop being willing to either give up their sons or make more. Only a totalitarian society can long make use of quantitative superiority and you might note that when we have resorted to force majeur, e.g., the US Civil War and WWII, we came awfully close to becoming a totalitarian society ourselves.
Part of the reason for demanding 100% American content is that some counterfeit computer chips turned out to be made in China. Some are suspected of being not only of poor quality but possibly compromised. It wouldn’t be a good thing for your enemy to have a back door into your systems, perhaps in the form of a remote on/off switch.
Yes, all of those things do drive up the cost of ships and aircraft. The high price means we can’t build as many of them (see: B-2A) so the cost spirals up even faster.
Modern destroyers can do everything from anti-submarine warfare to protection against ballistic missiles (SAM-3). Throw in cruise missiles, anti-aircraft weapons, a helicopter or two and the ship is not only very capable but very expensive. Perhaps they could split some of those missions with a degree of overlap so the ships can be smaller and less expensive. Perhaps not.
I think America is fast approaching the day when environmentalists will be told to sit down and shut up. They’ve had their way for entirely too long.
Yes, and the necessity of this is so obvious to anyone with a functional brain that to argue against it is indicative of profound stupidity or treason.
Hey, jackass, it is neither stupid nor treasonous to buy steel or aluminum on the World market rather than require that it be bought from a government monopoly provider in the noncompetitive US market.
I don’t think it is a good thing that the US can no longer produce basic materials competitively, but it is a fact. The only providers of many basic materials in the US are those who do business exclusively with the government, cost no object.
Remember the Pegasus class hydrofoil? If not, I’m not surprised. They were designed to be cheap and fast patrol ships that could, in the event of war with the Russians, swarm and fleet they sent out and pound it with Harpoon missiles. They would rely on speed and numbers (and the cheap cost of the boats in case of losses) to sink the less numerous big boats of the Russian fleet.
Only about 4 or 5 were built instead of the 100+ planned. Why? In part it was because the radar system was built in Germany. It was an excellent radar but when the company stopped supplying them for whatever reason, that was the end of the class. If they were made in the US, that would have been less of an issue.
The radar wasn’t the only reason for the demise of these hydrofoils. They had other safety and reliability issues that significantly contributed to their being mothballed.
For a second opinion see the SR-71 1993 – 1998.
Care to elaborate on that statement?
Maybe we don’t use many horses anymore. But we still use ships! What was the point of Obama’s faux zinger?
Anyway, to go to the root of the problem: Obama doesn’t want us to have a strong military, because we can’t be trusted with it. According to him, we’ll use it to run roughshod over all the poorer third-world nations (especially Muslim ones) of the world. Obama’s philosophy is the counterculture’s: We have met the enemy, and it is us.
Obama is not FOR the United States, in the normal sense of the word.
.
Not in any sense of the word, Larry. He’s a committed Marxist, and he is our enemy.
“Various supply ships also weave in an out of the group to keep them fed and (in the case of the non-nuclear-powered ships) fueled.”
The nuclear carriers also have large fuel requirements — for the aircraft.
If I remember correctly some years ago Admiral Moorer proposed a fleet of what he called “Armada Ships”, basically beefed up merchant vessels armed with a couple of hundred cruise missiles each, similar in concept to the “Monitor” type of vessels. For this he was castigated by his own contemparies in the Navy who did not want their bloated budgets threatened and their precious hi-tech devalued. I thought it was a great concept; a lot of bang for a few bucks.
Incidentally to anyone who thinks that there are no savings to be had in military spending I would ask them the question Col. Hackworth posed: Why does the US need two armies, two navies and five air forces?
They were called “Arsenal Ships” and we built them. They’re called SSGN – they’re converted Ballistic Missile Submarines. The Arsenal Ship concept was just not survivable enough, and a submarine has that inherent stealth, especially the boomers. We also have many years experience shooting Tomahawks from underwater, so the technical challenges were minor. The biggest problem was geopolitical – we declined to renew the ABM treaty as these would have violated it, which was one reason the Arsenal Ship was proposed. It wouldn’t violate the treaty.
One quibble – the original Arsenal Ship proposal was to use missiles or rockets like the Army ATACMS – i.e. something a lot cheaper than a Tomahawk. Tomahawks are pricey, and you don’t always need all of their advanced capabilities.
The new ones will loiter. You put them in the basket and the AWACS assigns them targets as needed. Ideal for mobile SAM systems.
Actually, we didn’t “build” them, we converted four SSBNs made surplus due to START reductions. But the point is, the SSGNs are essentially equivalents of the old Arsenal Ship concept, with the added capability of supporting SPECWAR units.
The sad thing is, we only have the four… that might sound good, but even a Red/Blue crew rotation and operating cycle means at best, only two of them immediately available at any give time.
“Why does the US need two armies, two navies and five air forces”
Sure … we could combine the Atlantic Fleet and the Pacific Fleet … except for this small land mass called the North American continent that is inconveniently in between those two oceans
Similarly, if our airplanes had unlimited range and close to infinite speed, we could put them all in the mid-west and a few moments later they could be over their targets on other continents. Until you invent an faster than light airplane, I think that we will need to have ‘air forces’ near to where they are needed
As for the number of armies, your source should check his count or armies. At present we have active four and several ‘frameworks’ in the event that an expansion of troop levels in needed. Once you invent your transporter, we can base all of our troops in conus and immediately beam them to where ever on the globe they are needed. Until then, we will have to make due with having our troops near to where they are needed.
Mark, I may be wrong but I understood the two armies to be the US Army and the USMC, the two navies to be the USN and the USCG (this doesn’t include all the Army watercraft so I guess it’s really three navies) and the 5 airforces as USAF, US Army, USMC, Navy, and USCG.
Having read most of what Hack published over the years, he did phrase the question the way that you interpret it. However, he had set it up as a rhetorical and then later went on the answer in terms of different missions, training, equipment and attitude with the end conclusion being that the ‘traditional’ organization (infantry, armor, surface weapons, air wings etc.) may be obsolete and that we needed to become more flexible and tailored to our specific mission (combining, for instance ‘special forces’ of the various branches into a unified command [which has been functionally done], and combining tac-air from USAF,USA and USMC into one command [which hasn't been done organizationally, but is being back-doored by common procedures and war experiences]).
IMHO, the OP was taking Hackworth’s statements out of context in an attempt to fit it into a justification for something it wasn’t meant to do — a blanket condemnation of ‘bloated budgets’
In hind sight, I should have placed a \sarc tag on my prior post to highlight my response
Hackworth was a brave man. Not very smart but very brave.
Why does a basketball team need 2 guards 2 forwards and 1 center. Why not 5 centers? Why does a football tean have tackles and guards? Why not 10 running backs?
Form follows function in a well designed system.
The US Military has many more critics then enemies. That is understandable considering most of our enemies are dead.
Think about that.
if were counting the Coast Guard as a naval fleet, can it have some more and better ships. Their ships are getting old enough there parts from the Smithsonian.
http://www.washingtonguardian.com/sailing-trouble
~Sigh~ At one time the US Army had more train locomotives than some railroads, but that didn’t make them a railroad. We have one Air Force, one Army, one Navy, and one Marine Corps. The fact that each service may implement tools in a medium (Air, Land, Sea)other than te medium for which they are chartered to ‘train and equip’ forces is irrelevant. Colonel Hackworth had a lot of knowledge about all things ‘grunt’. That specialized knowledge obviously didn’t qualify him for for a spot the Joint Chiefs.
Actually, the U.S. Navy has done something very like that. Several old Polaris subs and a few Ohio class subs were converted from carrying submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBM) to carrying cruise missiles. I’m not sure how many are still in commission today. Each old launch tube can hold several cruise missiles, so an Ohio class sub that held 24 SLBM’s can now carry over a hundred (perhaps two hundred? not sure) cruise missiles. The advantage of using subs over old freighters is that you can’t see them coming, and they’re still very, very hard to hear, too.
An attack at an air base in Afghanistan wiped out an entire wing of Harrier jets. There is a good chance that a large group of small Iranian ships and boats could attack and severely damage a carrier. Since those on the Iranian ships are willing to commit suicide it would be even more difficult to stop the swarm (remember, it’s easy to swat and kill a single bee. But what do you do against 200?).
I’ve never understood why we put so much into each aircraft and ship. Yes, they are techie marvels, but damage one and what happens? We have trouble affording a wing of these expensive marvels. Are we willing to risk such expensive craft? Even if our survival depends on it?
Irreplaceable Harrier jets.
That was an amazing incident. The Marine Corps lost an entire squadron, and nobody heard about it in the news.
I read 6 Harriers and 2 Cobra AH’s. Whoever was in charge of base security is toast. If he is lucky, they will let him resign. IIRC negligence in combat is 20 years and reduction in rank.
Good job by Haji, although it required a massive amount of incompetence by the commanders of the base.
Why is that the one commodity that is NEVER in short supply, regardless of budget issues? [sigh]
–carried out by 15 highly-trained sappers in friendly uniform, on a suicide mission after gaining base entry on a ruse. Cost in hard money, next to nothing. The 14 sappers KIA? Hard to figure that cost, but that production line, unlike the Harrier’s, is still open.
What would happen if the Iranians attacked a carrier battlegroup with a large swarm of small craft? We would easily sink them, small craft do not survive in an area where their enemy controls the airspace. Furthermore, it takes multiple hits to sink even a small warship, such as the old Perry class frigates, (re USS Stark, USS Samuel B Roberts) carriers are incredibly survivable. In contrast, a small craft is put out of action by a single burst from a machine gun.
That being said, I’m not too keen on cheap, small ships like the Perry’s. Which were designed as the low end of Zumwalt’s High/Low Mix in the 1970′s. They don’t integrate well in terms of speed and armament with the CVBG.
I personally would look at building 20k ton cruisers, capable of storing, launching, recovering and operating UAVs, along with an carried airmobile USMC detachment. This would give us platform that we can deploy independently to trouble spots like the Horn of Africa. That increases the number of locations we can have forces on station, while reserving the big decks for theater level operations.
And the swarm would have to get through the 8 or so destroyers screening the big guy.
Nonsense! Look at the physics. The only way the small boat swarm has even a slight chance if the entire CVBG is in harbor and anchored. Under weigh in the open sea there is zero chance.
Those small boats have to be loaded to the gunnel with HE to do more then blister the paint on a carrier. With that much load, the boats will not get up on plane. That limits them to 20 knots or less. Way less is a strong sea. a 3 foot chop and they will be doing good to make 10 knots. 6 feet and they will start swamping.
So all the Admiral needs to do is change course and go to flank speed. The death boats cannot catch them.
Just so you understand, lets put our CVBG in restricted waters where flank speed isn’t a real good idea. Your ‘boats of death’ will be detected hundreds of miles away. Coming out of harbor if the sea way is closer then that. Small boats don’t have the fuel to go hundreds of miles flat out. If they did, it would take them 10 to 12 hours to get there. The carrier is going to put up fighter bombers. They will then hunt down and sink those small boats. The biggest problem here is thinking of a good name for the slaughter. “Turkey Shoot” is already taken. So is “Charge of the Light Brigade”. Although the light Brigade stood a better chance then your ‘Boats of Death’.
How about “Charge of the Turkeys”?
What do you do against 200 cruise missiles ?
The Navy seems to be going heavy into directed energy weapons.
Oh, you mean _right_now_. Find some robotics geeks and have them
build a hunter-killer system based on the Predator UAV and MANPADs.
Where do you get your information? COTS has been at the heart of every ship procurement for the last 15 years. And you are oblivious to the obvious fact that smaller procurements for bbig ticket items like ships and planes increases cost per unit by many orders of magnitude. Your arguments seem not well researched or reasoned. Sure, we need more ships in order to get back to strength of force befitting a superpower. But putting our children – in great numbers – in harms way without the technology to counter the modern military threat is a bad plan. The genie is out of the bottle. If we don’t use the military technology that we invented, t9 the fullest extent feasible, the enemy will.
One thing to remember that I wish Romney had said during the debate is that no matter how good the ship, no matter how technologically advanced, one ship can only be in one place at one time.
We have huge global committments and are facing potential enemies far from our shores. We need a large Navy not only to keep the sea lanes open, but to also be able to project massive power when needed, either in the form of carrier battle groups or amphibious assault forces. None of this is cheap and you need a lot of ships to maintain these groups and to have enough of them to adequately cover the world’s trouble spots. Always remember that our NATO allies had a pathetic naval presence off the coast of Libya during that war, barely able to scrape together one small French aircraft carrier to support operations there. If it wasn’t for the US Navy, it’s doubtful that the Libyan operation could have been carried out, let alone won. Our NATO allies simply did not have enough carriers, escort ships, and, most of all, naval-based attack aircraft to pound Libyan targets in a quick and precise manner. Most NATO sorties were flown from Sicily, miles from Libya, which dramatically reduced the amount of time NATO aircraft could spend over Libyan targets. All this seems to escape Obama, who knows as much about naval power as he probably does about fornicating. Romney understands that a large, strong, Navy will not only keep our vital sea lanes open, but it will also allow us to project enough crushing power when needed in an emergency, especially in places like North Korea or Taiwan.
One thing I notices that doesn’t get discussed is our lack of sealift capability:
During Gulf War I, our almost non-existent merchant marine wasn’t up to the job. The navy had a few gas turbine powered cargo ships (they could keep up with the fleet), but one broke down and had to be towed to the Middle East theater.
Foreign flagged ships proved unreliable with crews refusing to pilot the ship into harms way.
Hopefully a Romney presidency will find a happy medium between having a super advanced but tiny / vulnerable force and a very large but utterly obsolete one.
Our laws require publicly funded ships to be built in American yards of American materials using, mostly, American union labor and when built, crewed by American union labor; the cost is extortionary. The ONLY American built and crewed ships in the World belong to governments or are in Jones Act controlled trade, i.e., between US ports. The cost of a US-built tanker or cargo ship is many multiples of the cost of a foreign bottom.
In the event of a war emergency, the civilian bottoms can be ordered to military service but especially tankers are in very short supply in the civilian sector so there would be oil shortages or Jones Act waivers would be required. The Gulf blowout demonstrated how much a Democrat administration is in thrall to maritime unions and would rather see civilians deprived than to grant Jones Act waivers.
The Master of a large Jones Act vessel on blue water can easily make from $150K to $250K for a half-years’ work; most schedules are a paid day off for each day worked. Chief Engineers make about the same as a Master and have about the same benefits. The stewards and cooks who make the and prepare the food for the crews make the better part of $100K, some more. Don’t send your kids to college; send them to one of the maritime academies. (I think I paid about $1K and had two or three three hour classes a week for a semester to get my Master’s license. Big ships and big waters require more, but anybody with reasonable test-taking skills can pass the tests. The ships are so highly automated that the only time you’ll have to know or use most of that stuff is to pass the test. Licensure is mostly just a barrier to entry.)
When we brought High Speed Craft Code vessels, fast ferries, on in intra-Alaska trade we had to have a $100K+ Chief Engineer on it despite the fact that the engine rooms were inaccessible while underway and there was no provision for repairs underway; love that USCG-sponsored featherbedding.
Obama is not even *wrong*, as Werner Heisenberg once said. Something on the order of 90% of the world’s commodities and goods move via the ocean, and they need to be protected, guided, controlled. And your “high tech” few ships can’t be *everywhere*. You *need* a large Navy simply to cover territory.
Obama reminds me of Katie Couric. In ’03, as we invaded Iraq, she had learned the acronym “BDA” (Bombing Damage Assessment) – and proceeded to throw it, proudly, into every sentence she possibly could, even where it almost made no sense. This is the level of expertise Barry-O has demonstrated by his meaningless pontifications.
That was Pauli who said that.
You can know who said it, or when, but not both to complete accuracy.
You know, you *may* be right.
For a Second Opinion check with the Philisines; re: Goliath.
The truth is that steel is cheap, but technology is expensive. Obama is probably correct in saying that the USN brass are pretty happy with current hull numbers. Getting enough sailors to man a much larger fleet would be a problem, especially if the civilian economy improves. That said, I suspect a two-tier fleet consisting of both first line and lower tech ships would have some advantages; the Royal Navy has had a lot of success using Royal Fleet Auxiliary ships for low-intensity missions such as chasing Somali pirates.
In the long run, close allies such as France and the UK can contribute more to the common defense. Britain should be encouraged to expedite the in service dates of the two large carriers it is building, and France should fund a second carrier. Like Britain, Italy and Spain are fully invested in the F-35B, which will serve on their “pocket” carriers. In the meantime, the Royal Netherlands Navy is standing up missile defense frigates that will be able to guard much of western Europe. The number of NATO hulls is way down from a generation ago, but the potential for vastly improved capabilities is there, and in in many cases is either fully or nearly realized.
“Obama is probably correct in saying that the USN brass are pretty happy with current hull numbers”
The political admirals in the Pentagon may be happy, I wonder about how the sailors under enemy guns feel about not having enough hulls to accomplish the mission?
The same class of generals in DC seems to be happy with the overly restrictive rules of engagement and terrorist coddling that are getting our war fighters killed because they have to ask ‘pretty please, may we defend ourselves.’
Another factory that hasn’t been brought up in the discussions yet is that during WW 1 & WW2 we had a domestic steel industry that was capable of turning out large quantities of metal shapes and plate from domestic sources of raw materials and the ship yards to put together the hulls needed to rapidly replace losses and expand the total ship count. We also had a relatively large merchant fleet to provide trained sailors.
We don’t have those advantages today.
“factor” not “factory”
What is needed is a balanced set of fleets. The main battle fleets, aka carrier task forces, are few in number compared to global responsibilites. Mid size ships, destroyers/crusiers should be larger in number and responsible for green water operations, covering areas where carriers are absent. Needed are ships for near shore/brown water operations. The USN tried to meet this need with the LCS but the class is considered a failue.
I hadn’t heard that LCS is a “failure,” I do think that the boats are relatively light compared to most surface warfare vessels, but are unfairly compared to them. LCS is designed as more of an inshore or littoral vessel, specifically made for choke-points such as the Persian Gulf. They’re modular in structure and can be made to adapt to everything from mine-clearance to landing SEAL teams.
In practice LCS is the naval equivalent of “Special Teams,” and if given the right mission package may be more capable of dealing with the IRGC Zodiac threat, where the Iranians have worked on that swarming tactic for use in controlling the Gulf. The Persian Gulf is shallow draft and you need lighter boats to really operate there. A Burke-class destroyer is more Blue Water, although appropriate for projecting power with it’s Tomahawks and other weapons.
Of course, we need all of the tools in the toolbox: carriers, cruisers, destroyers, escort frigates and Anti-Sub platforms (a dying art in the modern navies), SEALS and special operations, mine warfare, amphibious lift and assault, electronic warfare, etc, etc, etc. Getting more platforms to do more jobs sounds like a modern defense strategy, and not just pouring money into gold-plated high-profile weapon systems.
In 1916 (While Wilson was running for re-election on the lie that he would keep us out of war) we had maybe 98,000 men in the Army and about 13,000 enlisted Marines. I assume most of the enlisted me were issued bayonets.
Today we have 467,537 enlisted in the Army and 181,221 enlisted Marines. I guarantee that the Corps has a bayonet for every last Marine (and / or a K-bar for any who don’t carry a rifle). I bet the Army has enough bayonet for at least half its soldiers.
A statement of sheer military ignorance by Obama – shocking.
I was thinking much the same thing. What modern day soldier or marine doesn’t have and use (probably daily) a sharp edged tool?
There is no such thing as a Marine that doesn’t carry a rifle!
Everyone is a rifleman in the corps!
Some carry machine guns (without bayonet studs), some carry pistols and drive trucks.
“In World War II, the German war machine’s technological advantages far outstripped those of any other nation.”
No they didn’t.
Germany required a captured British airborne radar set to develop their own, and were constantly chasing British and American developments throughout the war.
Germany did not have gyrostabilizers for the main guns of their battle tanks, and suffered against American tanks that could fire on the move.
Germany copied sloped armor from the Soviets, and that awesome Tiger came about because they were chasing to catch up and surpass the Soviet T-34, which made all German tanks obsolete the moment it was deployed, and the KV. (And even before the T-34 showed the best “German” tank was likely the Czech Lt vz 38, aka Pz 38(t).)
Germany adopted rocketry from the Soviets as well.
Yes, the Germans led the way in several areas of military technology, but they also followed in several critical ones as well.
Yes, even when the German’s were in full retreat they were still killing off T-34 tanks at a rate of 4 to 1. That doesn’t sound like obsolescence to me. The T-34 was designed for overwhelming odds warfare. I’d sure love to be the minimally trained pilot who pretty much knows his death is assured, yeah gimme that.
After WWII we decided that sending Americans off to die in shoddy equipment wasn’t a good strategy – particularly when the commies had overwhelming numbers.
During the Reagan Administration, we brought back the battleships which were a massive problem for Chinese and Russian planners. Too much firepower and the ability to absorb an almost infinite amount of hits from conventional weapons – they just didn’t know what to do with them.
Once a battleships antennas and radars have been blown off it is deaf, dumb and blind. Blowing those away can easily be done with near-miss air burst conventional bombs. Seriously. Optical gun sighting simply won’t work at the distances that Soviet cruise missiles travelled. Besides, the Soviets had sub-launched cruise missiles at that time. Perhaps, perhaps, those battleships had depth sounders.
As for the battleship’s heavy armor, the Navy suspected at the time that they were brought into commission that the Soviets were deploying shaped charges in their larger, as in 1,000 lb and up warhead, anti-ship cruise missiles capable of punching through to the innermost and most heavily protected compartments of a carrier, it’s magazines. Cumulatively, all the layers of tanks, spaces and armor between a Carrier’s outer hull and it’s magazine provided more protection than a battleship’s armor. So destroying a battleship was simply a matter of using the same carrier-killing cruise missiles against them.
But still, the battleships were without question the most impressive warships afloat while in commission. Simply awesome! Capable of intimidating and impressing the hell out of anybody (who didn’t own carrier-killer cruise missiles).
I would also note that even the vaunted Tiger tank wasn’t a great tech leap. It was already obselete by the time it was fielded. Armor wasn’t sloped, was just thicker than other tanks. Engines were cranky, transmissions were fragile, fuel systems were prone to leaks, suspension was overly-complicated and prone to breakdowns, etc. And they took so many man-hours to build that the Germans only made a relative handful.
Many German wonder weapons were similar; over-rated, underbuilt, and ultimately unsuccessful at their intended purpose.
“Germany required a captured British airborne radar set to develop their own”.
NO Sir. IIRC, Germany had a working radar in ’34 or ’36. Several years ahead of the Nazi’s. Where the Brits got ahead of the game was in using that Radar. Germany put theirs on ships and used it for fire control. The British were the first to build lots of radars in rows and use them to locate enemy aircraft. The technical challenge was to prevent side lobes and fluctuations in the beam from interfering with one another. That problem was solved by a team of Americans working for Philips. The Germans never really solved that problem. They spaced their radars far enough apart so it wasn’t an issue. The British never thought of killing the radar sites. Maybe because the Germans tried and failed to kill the British radar sites so the limeys didn’t think it could be done.
Today, the first thing an air campaign does is knock out the radars. That is what makes the new Air Force missile so cool. It emits an EMP pulse that knocks out everything electrical within range. Don’t know what the range is.
We need to shoot a few at Iran’s centrifuges. That will stop enrichment without killing anybody.
http://killerapps.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/10/22/boeings_flying_blackout
Hey, Mr. President, they have these things called big deck Amphibs. And, on these big deck Amphibs there is a Marine Expeditionary Unit. On that MEU there are recon Marines and gunships. Those big deck Amphibs are on station in the Mediterranean Sea and probably could have reached Libya in enough time during the course of the six hour firefight you ignored, to rescue our Ambassador and his security.
Its funny listening to a whelp like Obama who probably didn’t have one iota of understanding of our Naval capabilities prior to getting into the oval office, and now wants to posture like he was SECNAV.
John, it wouldn’t necessarily take sophisticated missiles. The last US warship to be incapacitated by enemy action was the USS Cole. It was taken out by a couple of illiterate goatherds in a motorboat.
Imagine a swarm of 100 to 150 speedboats coming out from shore in the Gulf of Hormuz and rushing in among one of our task forces. Only one of them would have to get to the carrier.
No, they wouldn’t. They’d be obliterated by aircraft, side-rail .50 cals, escort ships, and possibly the CIWS.
You are assuming that the ROE’s are changed so that the crews can actively defend themselves and not worry about any collateral damage to ‘the innocent by-standers and fishermen’ who just happened to be nearby.
And what about the little children used as human shields on the small boats? Are we ready for the sob stories about the ‘helpless children murdered by our sailors’ in the islamic press, al-Reuters, al-Agence France-Presse, and our home grown dhimmi media?
If the small boat turns away (before or after it launches), are we still allowed to sink it?
What about the oil from the tankers that the islamics have sunk ahead of and behind our vessals? Would the follows of mohammed hesitate to light the leading crude on fire to help cause confusion during their second wave attack on our ships? Even if we don’t loose a major ship and none of our sailors are injured, the story will be turned by the willing accomplices in the media into a scenario where our sailors reckless shooting sank the tankers.
Agim Zabeli is laying out a very valid scenario that I hope our admirals at sea can handle.
Thanks for the laugh. Those speed boats you describe are planning hulls. In the open sea, they are limited to under 20 knots. To go faster, you need an open water racing boat. Hull starts about 2 mill. Engines another few million. Pack enough explosive in them to do more then scorch the paint and they will be too heavy to get up on plane. So we are back to 20 knots. Your target is doing 30+ knots. Do you see the problem?
Pirates use them to board cargo ships. They use stealth (sneak up on them) to get along side the ship and climb aboard. They stand no chance against a warship. 100, 150, doesn’t matter. My CIWS shoots 70 rounds per second. One hit and your speed boat is splinters when it’s cargo explodes.
The Navy is very much aware of “swarming” tactics, and is taking action to avoid same. The Cole was a sneak-attack, enabled by the ROE’s of the time. No technology can overcome stupid Rules of Engagement.
Part of it’s the military, but mostly I blame the procurement process as mandated by congress: mountains of paper, mountain ranges of reviews and “spreading the wealth” into too many congressional districts, lack of personal responsibility (and a lot of that IS beyond the project office’s control). And then there’s manpower: too few forces authorized to operate and maintain what we have, and no way to increase the numbers. As well as the clarion call: We’re Spending Too Much On DEFENSE! Twenty B-2s are really expensive for all the front-end costs. Same for F-22s and F-35s.
^^ This ^^
F-35 and F-22 cost per aircraft would be much lower if we built as many of them as we have F-15, F-16 and F-18 aircraft.
If we built as many B-2s as we had B-52s likewise.
And ditto on the pork and government mismanagment. The most cost-effective contractor rarely wins. It’s all about who you have in your pocket.
I wish F-111s were still in production. The RAAF still used them up to a few years ago, and they were fast, tough, and could be held together, in a pinch, with a bit of string and fencing wire.
This reminds me of WWII and the enormous numbers of Sherman tanks that were manufactured, which made up for the advantages of size and firepower that German Panzers and Tigers possessed. That being said, we still need larger ships such as battleships and aircraft carriers and the tools they bring to a given scenario.
Everyone seems to forget that in WWII US doctrine did not countenance tank on tank combat; the Sherman was supposed to get the Hell out of Dodge if it ran into a Panther or Tiger and call in the airpower or the tank destroyer. It wasn’t for nothing that a Sherman was one Helluva lot faster than Mk. IVs, Panthers, or Tigers.
To Allied soldiers, every German tank was a Tiger, but there actually were very few Tigers and most of them were where they were really needed, the Eastern Front. A Tiger wasn’t really even a tank as we now understand tanks; it was a mobile fortress. A single Tiger could take out a LOT of T-34s or Shermans, but there were a LOT of T-34s and Shermans. The Soviets countenanced tank on tank because they didn’t much care about casualties. The US and Britain viewed tanks as infantry support and to some extent, particularly Patton, as a sharp penetrating tool. The Allies spent most of the European invasion not wanting to be the last guy to die so they went slowly, carefully, and avoided casualties; casualties were for the Soviets.
Another factor that complicates this is the fact that cheaper platforms are often not as robust. The British learned this to their horror during the Falklands campaign. One politically based decision and workaround after another was exposed as a weakness in combat. The use of aluminium and magnesium in the superstructure (used to reduce weight topside) caused ships to burn. Cost deicisions and political delays caused HMS Sheffield to have only one fire main instead of the original design of three. The exocet strike knocked it out. AIr defense for many of the ships was nonexistent, since their orignal design was AWS. Others had Sea Wold or Sea Dart AAM systems, which had a minimum altitude to arm and track targets (if your original mission in life was to be a close escort in a task force, such precautions are apt). The British tried to utilize a slightly converted container ship (Atlantic Conveyor) to ferry Chinook helicopters. They sent it without escort, and didn’t give it any means of self defense, or damage control capability. People hailed it as a great experiment, proving that these ships could be pressed into service quickly and cheaply. Others pointed out that similar compromised designs gave good service during WWII (CVLs and CVEs) but were dangerous places to be in a fight.
CVE = Combustible, Vulnerable, and Expendable.
They put up one Helluva fight off The Phillipines though.
FWIW…
During WWII, the United States had a total of 90 escort carriers (CVE) in service. Of those, only six were destroyed by enemy action:
CVE-56 USS Liscombe Bay: Torpedoed by Japanese submarine I-175, Gilbert Islands, 24 November 1943
CVE-21 USS Block Island: Torpedoed by German submarine U-549, Canary Islands, 29 May 1944
CVE-73 USS Gambier Bay: Sunk by Japanese naval gunfire, Battle of Leyte Gulf, 25 October 1944
CVE-63 USS Saint Lo: Sunk by kamikaze, Battle of Leyte Gulf, 25 October 1944
CVE-79 USS Ommaney Bay: Sunk by kamikaze, Mindoro, 4 January 1945
CVE-95 USS Bismarck Sea: Sunk by kamikaze, Iwo Jima, 21 February 1945
Nine light carriers (CVL) saw service; one was destroyed – CVL-23 USS Princeton was lost to air attack during the Battle of Leyte Gulf, Oct ’44.
Some twenty fleet or light fleet carriers (CV) served during the war. Four were sunk:
CV-2 USS Lexington at the Battle of Coral Sea, May ’42
CV-5 USS Yorktown at the Battle of Midway, Jun ’42
CV-7 USS Wasp off Guadalcanal, Sep ’42
CV-8 USS Hornet at the Battle of Santa Cruz Island, Oct ’42
While the carrier group can only be in “one place” at once that is a pretty broad place. There is a graphic on the net somewhere that shows the reach of a carrier task force off the east coast of the US. It’s “reach” stretches to the Mississippi river from the gulf to the northern Canadian border.
It’s true that there is great value in more smaller ships that spread the impact of individual loss, but history has told us that we can’t deploy naval assets without adequate protection from sub and air attack (which now includes cruise and sea skimming missiles). Of course in a real war each carrier group makes one heck of a target for a nuclear attack.
So we need more smaller more specialized ships, which may share a common hull design and construction process, but they will not replace the ability to project airpower from the sea. Perhaps in 20-30 years we’ll be able to do it all with RPV and rail guns, but at least for now we’ll still need air power.
All that said, Obama has no concept of what is required to maintain the safety of this nation and protect our interests abroad.
Back in the 30s and up to the very early 40s we thought to save some money by cutting back on our Military budget. In the Atlantic we gave most of our mothballed WWI ships to England but had relatively few newer ships in either ocean. I dread to think what would have been if the carrier groups had not been out to sea on Dec. 7th, 1941. What were there four carriers? With those four carrier groups and what few ships managed to survive the attack we were able to hold on until new ships could be built and brought into service. What would happen today if we lost two or three of our carrier groups? There would be no way we would have time to build new ones. Do we have anything seaworthy that could be called into service to fill the gap in an emergency?
With all that is going on in the Middle East, has anyone heard anything about the pirates in Somalia? Are they still active? Do we have the ships to patrol those waters while we are also busy in the ME? What was that about a Russian submarine trolling around in the Gulf Of Mexico not to long back? How long did it take us to discover it? How much damage could it have caused if it were really up to no good?
Someone mentioned a swarm of smaller boats. Iran is doing exactly that. A large fleet of small speedboats, just large enough to carry one missile or a couple of torpedoes. I’m sure between helicopters and shipboard defense systems we could take out most of them but how many would get through? It would only take one to do some incredible damage.
Oh well, not to worry, our Dear Leader says our Military is fine, we can all sleep well tonight knowing Mr.0 has it all under control. I mean after all, he killed Osama all by his self didn’t he?
“With all that is going on in the Middle East, has anyone heard anything about the pirates in Somalia? Are they still active? Do we have the ships to patrol those waters while we are also busy in the ME? What was that about a Russian submarine trolling around in the Gulf Of Mexico not to long back? How long did it take us to discover it? How much damage could it have caused if it were really up to no good?”
Pirates are been cut down. Attacks have declined to less then 10% of the high water mark. Patrols are international. Almost every nation that has ship has sent one. NOBODY likes Pirates.
The Russian sub in the Gulf was BS. One of the net firms (CDNET maybe?)tracked back on the article and it was released by a small EW firm that specialised in Sonar. They were trying to create enough fear to keep their contract going. No Russian sub in the Gulf.
I find it short-sighted and kind of disturbing that you view the Sherman tank as an unmitigated success. Yes, we won the war and destroyed most of Germany’s Tigers, eventually, but each Sherman that was destroyed represented 6 lives that were lost. And while I understand the importance of being able to deal with losses, there is also value in preventing those losses in the first place. And if we can’t stop playing world police, we should at least try to minimize the number of lives we lose in the process. Simply throwing a bunch of cheap ships into a battle so that we don’t have to be concerned about losing them is not any wiser than Obama thinking that bayonets are no longer in use.
Unmitigated. No concern about loss of life or material. Playing world police.
You did a fine job of correctly quoting me.
Goatherds in speedboats are a minimal threat, but even so the right weapon to fight them is not necessarily a carrier battle group, so we need the new litoral ships – but should probably not be building them out of aluminum, different topic.
Anti-ship missiles are the real threat, high-capability against our high-capability. And in anything like a fair fight, it comes down to numbers. Years ago I read something claiming the “capability” of a group of fighter jets went up linearly with capability but exponentially with number. That strongly suggests you do NOT ever go straight with capability – as per the German Tigers.
Not to mention that for better or worse we want to patrol the world, and it’s a big world.
And what about those copter carriers? We had one off the coast of Libya a year ago, so where was it now that it was needed? Probably a couple hundred miles away in the Mediterranean – and frankly, I’d really like an answer to that question. Maybe it finally went through the Suez Canal and was worlds away?
Just imagine if we had a couple more of those in the fleet, Mr. President, so that there was one available when it was needed.
Funny how he’s big on hiring numbers of teachers, but not ships.
Real situation is that Obama just don’t do no numbers.
The science fiction author Arthur C Clarke wrote a short story named “Superiority” way back in 1951.
The story is a scientist’s explanation of how the much more technologically advanced power (though using basically the same technologies) with the largest, most powerful combat fleets in a war nevertheless managed to lose the war by constantly seeking new advanced breakout technology weapons whose performance never quite matched expectations, and sometimes failed catastrophically.
Meanwhile, the weaker power focused on building new ships and weapons with incremental improvements on their existing reliable technology and ultimately prevailed.
61 years later, it should be required reading for everyone in the US military anf Government involved in R&D and procurement.
Why? I like Science fiction and have even been known to write it. Science Fiction is NOT reality. If it was, it wouldn’t be called Science Fiction.
Arthur C. Clarke also wrote stories that were not science fiction (e.g. “Glide Path”) and some things that were not fiction. He based the story on Nazi Germany. As an example, go browse some reference materials on aircraft development for the Luftwaffe. The Germans wasted a lot of time and resources developing too many models of aircraft. Hitler longed for wonder weapons (“silver bullets” in another context) that would change the tide of war. Consider the V-2. It was an impressive missile for its day but did very little damage for the amount of money and materials spent on its development and production.
As others have pointed out, the Germans spent too much on their Tiger tanks. They were over-engineered, fragile, difficult and expensive to produce and couldn’t be built in sufficient numbers to be decisive. Simplier tanks built in larger numbers would’ve been a better choice.
“Quantity has a quality all its own” – Stalin.
Not really. Remember Germany was a small nation with a population of about 60 million, IIRC. The USA and the Soviet Union both had about twice that. The Commonwealth had about 160 million, IIRC. Germany was resource poor also. No OIL worth talking about.
Germany had no chance in an attrition war. They knew it and invented mechanised warfare in an effort to avoid attrition war.
What kept Hitler’s wonder weapons from winning the war was the 8th Air Force.
There’s a lesson in there for our green energy policy whiz kids.
“There is not much justice in this world without a navy.” (Rudyard Kipling, Rewards and Fancies)
With all due respect Mr. Owen your conclusion is wrong. The strength of our military has been the use of more expensive weapons. The Soviets always had quantity over the quality of our equipment and we saw how that has fared in numerous wars since the end of WW II. I highly recommend you read up on your military history. Also read about the battle of Jutland where a few German ships did serious damage to a larger force of British ships.
Before all you uninformed, highly opinionated blabermouths solve this one, you need to answer three questions.
1. What do you have a military for?
2. How do you use it?
3. When do you use it?
Obama can’t answer these questions.
Romney is a bit more clued in but could still probably only pull a 33%.
Think you can pass?
Here’s a tip.
Do a bit more studying before you take the quiz.
1. What do you have a military for? Power projection.
2. How do you use it? As far away as possible. It is always better to fight in your enemies cities then ours.
3. When do you use it?As needed. Daily if you want to consider the indirect effects. How many despots have decided not to start a war because they knew just over the Horizon there was a CVBG. He might not be able to see it but he knows it can see him. If you can see it, you can target it. If you can target it, you can hit it. If you can hit it, you can kill it. It inspires the proper attitude in a bloodthirsty tyrant to know we can kill him any time it becomes worth the trouble.
Every now and again the dream of swarms of small, cheap naval vessels for ocean superiority comes back to haunt us. Thomas Jefferson almost dismantled the Navy with his little “Jeffers” and a few decades later the Confederacy wasted scarce resources on the Maury gunboats. Even today, you can go down to Hampton Roads and see the sunken, crumbling hulls of the concrete freighters which were Henry Kaiser’s scheme to revolutionize military logistics in WWI. All were failures, made no less costly by their cheapness. The truth is, you need big vessels. And smaller ones to support them. And older ones to serve as proven platforms. And new, R&D types to explore new avenues. That adds up to a lot of ships, if you’re doing it right. Read your Mahan – something that our “smartest guy in the room obviously hasn’t – because it’s still true: the nation with the largest, most powerful fleet wins. Because the world is mostly water.
Good point. The truth is that balancing capability against quantity is a very tricky job. It does no good building a super fighter or frigate or tank that you can only afford one of; likewise it is useless to field a thousand aircraft or ships or tanks that the enemy can easily take out with an inexpensive missile.
The U.S. military isn’t really as stupid as is portrayed on TV. The problem is that if in order to make any headway at all against our most capable possible enemies (notably the Russians, the Chinese, and their client states that purchase their arms) and maintain the U.S. tradition of paying for technology rather than sacrificing people (as both of the above do) we must maintain our technological edge – which is expensive. Just remember: if we don’t have that clear technological edge, then we will need to train (and be willing to lose) many more soldiers and crewmen. If you remember that a pilot or officer can cost upwards of a million dollars to train, even a billion dollars towards a technological advance balances out in the long run.
What we do is to try to maintain a balance between the two extremes. In almost every field you see a first-string of a few very expensive machines that do the jobs that no other platform can do, and a second-string of less expensive units that do the day-to-day stuff. The F-22 Raptor is an air-superiority fighter, the successor to the F-15 Eagle, and is very stealthy, very fast, and very agile. It takes out the enemy fighters in the initial stages of a battle. Then the F-35′s (replacing the F-16′s) come in and maintain it, as well as doing other small jobs. The DDG-1000 Zumwalt destroyers will be used for similar missions, with the regular AEGIS frigates doing the day-to-day stuff.
A few other thoughts:
* Remember that today’s “bleeding edge” super technology is tomorrows state-of-the-art. Practically, the only way to keep up (remembering that our foes want their technological edge too) is to be the first to put it on the first-string platform; it 20 years it will be on the second-string and will be required if anybody is to survive the battlefield at all. Stealth is a good example. 20 years ago, only the F117 light bombers were stealthy. Now every new fighter and bomber is.
* Some platforms, especially bombers and carriers, must be high-tech if they are to function at all. Despite some of the comments above, carriers are not really “targets”. We’re pretty good at protecting our high-value assets. I’m sorry, but there’s a good reason why the B-52 is now limited to areas that don’t have good air defense systems.
* A lot of the bleeding-edge technology being developed has other purposes than simply delivering a heftier punch. Take the railguns being developed by the Navy at Dahlgren NSWC, for instance. The main purpose of developing them isn’t really the staggering muzzle velocity, although it will deliver that. It’s to make the ships safer by eliminating the need to carry gun propellant. This also increases the number of rounds that a ship can carry. (Finally, it also lets the Navy move towards an all-electric ship that can move power between propulsion, the weapons, and the sensors as required.)
* When costing most of these systems, don’t be fooled by the “per unit” cost that the media cites. They get this by dividing the overall program cost – including research and development by the number of units procured. This cost is always several multiples of the actual per-unit construction costs because it ignores the NRE (Non-Recurring Engineering) costs of the program. The actual fly-away cost of a B-2 is about $100 million, not a $1 billion. So, you don’t actually save much money by making fewer of them.
Right about the unit cost. A *lot* of the unit cost of the new fighters is because of the small production runs, which are because they are supposed to have that “high capability” that Obambus was mis-arguing about. And we are trying to push into new technologies, composite materials with both weight and stealth advantages, also supercruise for the F-22. Boeing is doing the same right now for the purely commercial 787, and having the same kinds of cost overruns there. Should work out anyway, it’s just time to try. For the military, much of the cost of this is the cost of keeping the US military infrastructure intact, alive, and ahead of the competition. We should probably remove BIG chunks of the cost of these programs into such a writeoff (necessity) category.
OTOH, the question is whether an F-15 “Stealth Eagle” variant, not as stealthy and not as fast as an F-22 but better than the old F-15s and much cheaper than the F-22, would be better. Say you can buy 3x more Stealth Eagles. That’s a bit of a tough decision.
Should probably bring back the Crusader program too, self-propelled new technology eight-inch artillery, and I like the name just fine, too.
Agreed. Personally, as an engineer, I think that the military – the Air Force in particular – would be better off implementing a planned upgrade sequence. The F-15 is a fantastic fighter; make the next air-superiority fighter the F-15 with all of the same electronics and systems but a stealthy airframe. Then upgrade the avionics, then the engines. It may take longer, but you could get to the Raptor in perhaps 3 or 4 cycles.
OK, “Silent Eagle”.
http://www.flightglobal.com/blogs/the-dewline/2012/08/boeing-f-15se-silent-eagle-add.html
Google for more.
$100m unit cost!!!!!
I’ve learned a great deal here today. What I think I know for sure is that Romney in any event will not walk into a meeting of the joint chiefs of staff or a dozen admirals and tell them how to run the navy or how many ships to build. That isn’t how he worked as an executive. I suspect all of the aforementioned will be deeply engaged in the discussion and Romney will help them come to an agreed decision and not everyone will think it right but they will climb on board for the good of the nation.
On the other hand I think I know for sure that Obama will do everything in his power to unilaterally disarm the U.S. in his second term, including nukes and he will tell the joint cheifs of staff to ‘just do it’ because ‘I won” and then walk away.
Thanks.
President Snarky was sharpening his expertise for the media cabinet of Leno, Letterman, and Steward. His Foxworthy lines of Romnesia are likewise the sounds of an imploding ego who could never be presidential-commander-in-chief, leader of the free world. Perhaps he thinks that hissy fits will win elections. The contrast is style over substance.
You know how I know Obama won the debate? Because while the Dems are celebrating, PJ Media is struggling to defend Romney against a well-earned characterization that he is completely clueless on national defense. His only solution is “Let’s spend more money we don’t have on obsolete technology that no one wants or needs, because my advisors are defense contractors who stand to make billions.”
Some village is missing its lefty idiot.
Obama was clearly out of his league — my guess is that he’s probably never even read a real naval history, let alone be considered to be fit to be a real commander in chief
Someone on his campaign team came up with the line and taught the “Pretender in Chief” to deliver it at the apparently appropriate time even without a Teleprompter — unfortunately the writer of the line didn’t know enough about the Navy (submariners refer to their boats not ships), Marine Corps(e) (they do use bayonets and even nasty kBar knives) or Special Ops Command (Don Rumsfeld’s famous big photo of the Special guys on their mounts calling down GPS guided, laser located destruction on the Taliban in the 2001 Autumn Victory) — somewhere George Patton is smiling
Unfortunately — Obama’s quip missed all of the above
Or, contrariwise, one can view these Defense outlays as jobs, and damned good ones at that, who produce some of the most cutting-edge technological advancements possible. All at the same time maintaining our national defense par excellence.
Only a Democrat could somehow view the above as “wrong” and Defense “deserving” to be cut. And all, no doubt, so you can provide benefits to some left-handed, one-legged, Guatemalan Lesbian whose here illegally.
As a Party, you guys are a pathology and an utter joke.
“…he is completely clueless on national defense.”
Red herring. Obama’s qualifications were whatin 2008? His track record the last 4 years as CiC is out there. Defend it.
PS – I still have friends down range and Barry is loathed. Alpha males can see the Beta-male 10,000 miles away despite the agitprop.
It was interesting to read the article. Almost as much as reading the commentary. It was enjoyable to read some very acute observations and even the more conventional opinion offered something to discuss.
Until we get to “this guy”. I thought I was reading a discussion on the merits of the candidates viewpoints on military use and expenditure. Until we got to “this guy”. Would someone tell this little boy that it’s not polite to come into a room of adults and pee on the floor. It’s not attractive, nor useful and all it does is interrupt the conversational flow. Plus, it embarrasses your parents.
This article is severely misconceived. I’m glad I’m not the 1st to point this out, but “cheaper” ships means less capable, and even more, less adaptable, ships. This is a mistake the British made in the 30′s & WWII. The result was that they couldn’t afford to adapt most of their classes to post-WWII conditions. E.g., the Illustrious class carriers and Fiji class cruisers (and their half-sisters), of which only one carrier and 3 cruisers ever came into service in modernized form.
The trouble is simply that, to reduce cost, you must reduce capability, which in the end means you need MORE ships to do the work. Sure, the LCS is adapted to warfare in coastal choke points, but then, so is a destroyer. But the latter can also be part of a carrier TF, or an escort for sealift. And the LCS will be inherently harder to adapt to new tech, and new missions, in the future. In an age when ships often serve 30 or 40 years, this is a BIG ******* DEAL.
Part of the problem is just looking at “right now”. In the 20′s, air advocates claimed you could get 1000 bombers for the cost of one battleship. OK, now how useful would those 1000 1925-era planes be in 1941? You simply must consider the future; what will these ships be capable of in 2032? The bigger they are, the more likely they will be able to adapt. Don’t take my word for it.
http://www.usni.org/magazines/navalhistory/2012-07/judging-good-bad
There’s a lot to be learned from Jutland. The opposing fleets were about the same size, and the losses to each –a few percent of the deployed tonnage — were comparable. A tactical draw, more than anything else. The result, though, was almost ‘perfect’ for the Royal Navy and equally enormous though at the other end of the spectrum, for the German High Seas Fleet.
Simply, the Germans sailed home and dropped anchor –for the duration (a long long way from the early 1916 battle). This splendid fleet represented so much national wealth that the German high command after Jutland never again –despite the far greater part of the war yet to be fought, and to be lost at that, in some part due to the British naval blockade –never again found a way to make the odds of another fleet action worth taking.
One might conjecture that the cost of building that ‘harbor queen’ navy, transferred instead to a dozen or two 1918-style armored and ‘shock troop’ type divisions deployed to the famous final go-for-broke offensive, might’ve won the war.
Quick crude lesson, sometimes building a second-best navy is without any doubt a tremendous victory for the enemy even when no shot is fired, and is therefore in those cases worse than no navy, and, a principle from Mahan i think, that a navy of a single warship rules the seas if there’s no other warship on it (‘rule the seas’ means more than the high seas, but too the huge fraction of the world’s cities that are coastal ports and subject to seaward bombard and blockade).
As to how the allies were able to parlay an essentially drawn sea battle into such a striking strategic victory, some of it is geography (exploiting choke points), some of it was the German submarine effort toward war of attrition, but there’s no way to deny that considering the vastness of the effort to send a world-class battle fleet to sea, that there must have been something else in the air. Maybe it was Nelson and Trafalgar, still paying dividends a century later.
Good points about WW1 navies. It should be added to the list that Germany’s High Seas Fleet was held out of battle by order of the Kaiser. The admirals wanted to fight (mostly) but the Kaiser was a navy guy and couldn’t stand the thought of his babies getting blown out of the water. Strangely enough, he had no problem telling the army to get another 100,000 men blown up on the line.
I dispute your claims Buddy. At Jutland the Germans had 99 ships to Britain’s 151. Germany deployed just 16 battleships to Britain’s 28. That’s nearly double the battleships. The only types of ships that the two sides had in comparable numbers were in battle cruisers. The battle is only considered a draw because the German’s withdrew at the end of the day but they had sunk 113,000 tons of Britain’s fleet and killed around 6000 sailors. The Germans only lost 62,300 tons had 2,551 sailors KIA. The main difference between the fleets were the Germans had more armor on their battleships and better fire and control than the Brits. In order to maintain numerical superiority the Brits skimped on their armor and gunnery. The consequences of Britain’s decision are plain to see.
We’ve already had a taste of the small boats vs current Navy in the Persian Gulf. It was the “Tanker War” during the Iran – Iraq war from 1984 – 1987. Iraqis put a pair of Exocets into the Stark in 1987. Navy shot down an Iranian Airbus a year or so later that was not squawking the correct IFF code.
I’ve read a couple write ups on what the Navy did. One has a precision response to (mainly) Iranian provocation. The other has an initial goat screw followed by a learning curve, mod in ROE and a couple bad events (Stark and the Airbus).
We’ve done it before. I expect we will do it better next time around.
As to shooting tanks, the feeling in the A-10 community during the 1980s was that they were going to be dropping like flies should anything exciting happen in Europe. We trained to take 2000′ side / top / rear shots for M / K kills. The neat thing about the Soviets and anyone who were supplied and trained by them was that there were an awful lot of armored vehicles mixed in with the tanks, all of them full of men, fuel and ammo. The airframe was reasonably accurate at over 4000′ and you could get good penetration on an armored vehicle with a round from that range. And if you hole it, you very likely stop it as we found in Desert Storm / first Gulf War. Cheers -
If we learned nothing else from the Gulf wars, it was how to properly integrate air power and land power. It absolutely blows my mind to see a strategic bomber (B52′s and B1′s) supplying close air support!
Question from a land-lubber: Do we have to borrow money from the Chinese to build a navy that can keep them in their place or can we just trim everyone’s deductions?
Hey, Marx said the capitalists would sell the commies the rope to hang them with, and now it’s the other way around, weird huh.
Actually building weapons is one manufacturing category that stays in this country (mostly, some squeaks out to Europe).
And the deal is, we do it or the country dies, so we do it. Unless Obama is reelected, and then you do the math.
No, we print some extra money. Much of it comes back to the government as payroll and income taxes, and and the rest gets spent in the economy.
Sounds like a plan.
I am impressed with some apparently very, very savvy comments above. We have “old tars” and modern warriors with decades of experience.
PLEASE, GET READY TO SHARE IT WITH MITT ROMNEY AND PAUL RYAN.
Send them your advice: http://www.mittromney.com/contact-us
PLEASE, GIVE THEM A “LITTLE TIME” TO GET RID OF OBAMACARE; END SEQUESTRATION; GET OUR PIPELINE GOING TO CANADA; AND PERFORM A HOST OF OTHER “DAY ONE” “ULTRA PRIORITY” TASKS.
I have written them for months now, and received polite, albeit form, replies promptly, but I felt like there was someone on the other end of that email who cared and would prioritize my comment and pass it along.
THERE IS A TRIAGE EFFORT GOING ON NOW, and your sound advice, valiant experience, and LOVE OF THIS COUNTRY qualify you to serve as ad hoc advisors as our newly elected leaders can get around to these things.
We need both quantity and quality to maintain our required unquestioned superiority
However the mix can be constructed in several ways:
a) do it all yourself — impossibly expensive
b) do some of it and let your allies do some of it in a coordinated fashion
c) hope someone else does what you don’t do
Today, thankfully we have enough competent allies that we can manage the Plan B
For example the US and Japan both operate Arleigh Burke-class Vertical Launch system Aegis Destroyers equipped with the world’s unchallenged best surface to air and even surface to space (satellite shoot-down) missile and radar system
We’d even be better if Pres. Clinton hadn’t kayoed key elements of the anti-ICBM technology for the ships. We had a program joint with Japan to develop the necessary booster-updates and improvement to the kinetic-kill terminal stage — Obama tried to delete it and managed to delay it. If we can pursue the joint development and deployment of the Aegis-VLS technology with other allies who could package small units of it into smaller, cheaper more numerous ships — the good guys end up winning without the US having to do Plan A
Anyway the point is — we (US and reliable allies) need both lots of ships to patrol open areas of the oceans and a good number of the major combatants to deliver the major whomping when needed
So, when are the satellite controlled drone carriers going to be built?
I remember when this same arguement was made in the 1980′s as the government struggled with producing enough ships to match the sheer number of Soviet navy warships. It centered around whether to build the expensive Aegis cruisers or less expensive and less capable cruisers. Today the capabilities of the Aegis system to shoot down ballistic missiles has, I think, far exceeded the expectations of the designers who developed the system in the 70′s and 80′s. An expensive system that has outlasted its cheaper alternatives and, over the years has probably turned out cheaper than developing an alternative system at a later date.
This illustrates the problem with cheaper: it usually doesn’t last. Even if the systems function perfectly, but don’t keep up with progress in military technology, we’ll have to replace and upgrade it sooner rather than later, and it will cost us more, not less.
Wow, we have ships on which aircraft can actually land and take-off? Gee whiz, who wouldave believed that?
And ships that can actually go underwater without sinking? Marvelous.
And, more, ships that can actually fly through the skies without falling like a stone? Actually, I know about those flying ships, because I just flew in on one as I was coming to Boca Raton. Mr President, you”ll know all about them, too, since you actually live in one and have done so for four years, occassionally coming down to earth to shoot hoops or something.
I’m wondering what ”flexibility after my re-election” is in regards to. Whatever it is, he’s said to Kremlin #2 to pass it on to Kremlin #1 that, fine, he’ll DO it, but if he even talked about if before the election, the voters would throw him out.
Let’s read that one more time, in bold:
Whatever it is, he’s said to Kremlin #2 to pass it on to Kremlin #1 that, fine, he’ll DO it, but if he even talked about if before the election, the voters would throw him out.
The two Kremlins were clearly wondering about his progress on implementing that whatever it is, and he was clearly putting a finishing touch on that progress report. That both sides can screw up badly enough to say what was said into an open mic (or even on camera at center stage where a lip-reader can review the film), is evidence that a pretty heavy-caliber cannon is loose and rolling around on deck.
PS, if anyone has a faintly disappointyyed feeling that someone with as much to hide as Obama has, was let off so easy in the debates, and is wondering why they have that little nagging feeling, well that ”flexibility” incident is where at least this reader’s nagging feeling comes from.
Romney –and I LIKE Romney, and back him all the way –should have asked Obama point-blank what the heck he was talking about in the incident. And then follow-up question whatever practiced line would’ve emerged. And then he should’ve kept on belaboring it until it became an exchange that would’ve made the news, and the ‘clip’ shows for the coming week and the rest of the campaign.
Just a note, for those not overly familiar with modern warfare: when thinking about this subject don’t get overly carried away with analogies to WWII. Several aspects of modern warfare have completely changed how battlefields are handled, particularly the advent of precision-guided munitions. See my previous comment about heavy bombers providing close-air support in Iraq and Afghanistan; that’s almost entirely due to the availability of GPS-guided munitions that can hit within a few meters of their aimpoint.
You have to look at the Gulf Was: Desert Storm, Desert Shield, and the war in Iraq to get an idea of how future conflicts may go (although now you have to add the cyber dimension also).
First and foremost: control the air. The whole reason behind the F-22 Raptor, successor to the F-15 Eagle, is that the Army doesn’t do squat until the Air Force controls the airspace. If I control the air, than I can take out your command and control systems, your supply lines, and your communications at my leisure, so the first thing that we did in Iraq is take out their Air Force and their air defense systems. Most of that was done by Apache helicopters, some by the F117′s. The F15′s made sure that no Iraqi fighter could threaten our units. In order to do this, however, you need air-superiority fighters that are better than their fighters and can take out the other guys quickly and with few losses. At sea, of course, this is the Navy’s responsibility, but the same rule applies. Most of the Iraqi air force was actually taken out on the ground, while in their bunkers.
Second, take out their command and control structures. After we wiped out the Iraqi air defenses, their bunkers came under attack by F117′s, B2, B1′s, and cruise missiles. Even though their air-defense networks were gone, stealth was still required because of the heavy anti-aircraft fire (you can never quite get all of the buggers, especially mobile systems and MANPADS). This is where the GBU-28 and its like came into play, capable of going through 10′s of feet of concrete and rock, using GPS and laser guidance to hit within feet of their aimpoint.
Finally Send in the Army to secure the ground. The critical technologies here are GPS guidance, enabling the tanks to move through featureless desert (Hussain simply couldn’t believe that we could move as fast as we did through the desert without requiring roads), the advanced armor and gun of the M1, and our communications capabilities. True story: an M1 got bogged down in mud during the initial thrust and had to wait for a tow vehicle. It got jumped by three Iraqi T-72s. First T-72 fired a HEAT round, which bounced off of the M1. The M1 returned fire. Scratch that T-72. Likewise for the second T-72. The third T-72 decided that discretion was the better part of valor and retreated behind a sand berm some distance away. The M1 commander could see his engine exhaust coming up behind the berm, through is IR viewer, and fired a sabot round through the berm, destroying that tank also.
The moral of the story is: sometimes having the best technology does pay off. Iraq, being a Russian client state, had good weapons and defense systems. Ours were better, and we knew how to use them.
One nuclear missile that manages to slip through a carrier’s defenses will totally destroy the ship, its crew compliment, all on-board aircraft and its defensive weaponry. The explosion may destroy most if not all the carrier’s escort. The fighters and helicopters in the air that aren’t involved in the fireball will not have enough fuel to divert to a landing strip that can accommodate them.
A few enemy hits like this, the Navy is totally screwed and so are we. Back to bayonets and horses.
[W3]
Many cheap ships? I guess that means we can anticipate Mittens appointing Gary Hart as SecDef? Oh wait, are we still pretending Mittens is conservative? OK, we’ll have a Gary Hart Defense Policy but we’ll defend it as the only smart way to go. Got it.
OK, then, let’s have an Obama/Putin Defense Policy and defend it as the only smart way to go. Got it.
There was an understanding during WWII that it took 5 Shermans to destroy a Panther; the Germans built just short of 5000 of them, we built over 25,000 Shermans.
The Panther was superior to the Sherman in every way (I will allow the possibility that fueling it with gasoline rather than diesel was not the best option), on a one-on-one basis. But warfare is unpredictable, always. Countless are the times when the superior force is overwhelmed by sheer numbers.
It is simply ludicrous to base our military capabilities on technology alone, to the exclusion of mass. It does not matter how well an F-15 performs in combat against a MiG 29; if the pilot has 10 adversaries, he will lose. The same goes on the water.
A Marine with an M-4 can shoot a few dozen Red Chinese. What happens when he runs out of bullets?
oh, yeah, I forgot; we don’t have so many bayonets anymore, either…
We produced 49,000 Shermans and the Germans built just under 6,000 Panthers.
COTS equipment?
YES!YES! Military computer equipment and high-tech gadgetry is ludicrously overpriced due to bad contracting procedures and, sadly, an element of corruption; if Romney can transform that, he will save billions of dollars right there.
Ann Barnhardt –the commodity brokerage owner/operator who (after sending 100% of her clients 100% of their money back) who quit the biz as dramatically as possible in protest over the MF Global/Corzine ”legal/illegal” bust out (see Clinton, Bill, 1992-2000, the Law according to) –has this to say on that:
On Defense Spending and Shadow Welfare
–Posted by Ann Barnhardt – October 23, AD 2012 8:22 PM MST
It’s amazing the things you can learn in a life if you just shut your piehole and listen. People ask me frequently, “How do you know all of this stuff?” This website is nothing more than the fruit of a life of near silence, which is required for listening, both auricularly and in the form of reading, which is the purest form of listening.
People look at the now-dead First American Republic’s defense spending budget and despair. The amount of money being spent is massive and implies a massive federal income tax as a pure necessity in order to maintain any level of defense preparedness.
I have some good news (for a change) with regards to the issue of defense spending, and you all need to listen up because this will be another HUGE point to remember for after the collapse and war when you are rebuilding or building a new nation from scratch.
The major defense contractors spend at least ten times, and probably closer to twenty times what is actually needed on every project and contract. This is done with the full knowledge and at the command of the federal government.
The massive overspending is on man-hours. Major defense contractors such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics and Raytheon, in addition to supplying and developing technology for the military, are also massive middle-class shadow welfare projects. The top 25 US Defense companies directly employ roughly two million people. The top 5 US defense companies directly employ 550,000 people. Directly. This doesn’t count the subcontractors to these companies.
These companies, as they operate today, have at least TEN LEVELS of largely unnecessary, redundant and even detrimental “management” between the scientists and engineers who are actually doing productive work and the actual upper management of the company. Further, these ten levels of “management” are each low six-figure positions. We’re not talking ten levels of redundant janitorial staff at $12.00 per hour. We’re talking TEN LAYERS of $100k-$250k positions.
And these people do basically nothing that is genuinely productive. In fact, they slow down the process of genuine development and productivity, hamstringing and bogging-down the work of the actual engineers and computer scientists who, ironically, dwell at the absolute BOTTOM of the corporate structure.
(end quote, read more at the link)