Why Can’t the US Navy Build Warships?

America is falling behind her peers. 

By Dave Patterson @ Liberty Nation News, Aug 18, 2024 Tags: Articles, Military Affairs, Opinion

Keeping the US Navy in fighting shape is no easy job. Now, according to a Congressional Budget Office analyst, the sea service is in its worst shape for turning out warships in a quarter century. China and Russia are taking more command of the sea lines of communication worldwide, and America cannot field warships that are on cost, on schedule, and perform to contract specifications in a timely fashion.

US Navy Faces Challenges with Shipbuilding

The sad state of the US naval capability to field combat-worthy vessels is not something that happened overnight. More troubling, the same problems plaguing the Navy are equally represented in other military services. However, the Navy shipbuilding program has recently taken center stage because its launching of new, more capable US warships has not kept up with the threats posed by America’s adversaries. So, what exactly is the problem?

In the US defense acquisition system, with “system” writ large, there are three elements: the acquisition process, the budget process, and the requirements determination process. “Much of the blame for US shipbuilding’s current woes lies with the Navy, which frequently changes requirements, requests upgrades, and tweaks designs after shipbuilders have begun construction,” according to the Associated Press assessment of culpability. All too often, the Navy determines that some new threat creates a new requirement, leading to demands for changes often before the ink is even dry on the award contracts.

Over the years – and sometimes even decades – that it takes for a new ship program to be ready for action, America’s enemies may have fielded numerous naval weapon systems. This leaves the US Navy warship program without the decided advantage desired when the program began. Consequently, what is called “requirements creep” drives the program.

The AP assertion that “current woes lies [sic] with the Navy,” albeit accurate in a macro sense, is not precise. The US Navy is not a person; it is an institution – and institutions aren’t culpable. People are. Institutions don’t lead or manage. People do. Whether the requirements for a warship are appropriate to address a threat is a determination made by US Navy requirements managers: people.

One measure of the Navy’s capability to meet mission requirements over 25 years is to simply look back. In 2000, there were 318 battle force ships in the US Navy. Now there are only 296. However, there are better metrics for looking at the capability the Navy needs in the future. “The 568-ship fleet of FY1987 may or may not have been capable of performing its stated missions; the 296-ship fleet of May 2024 may or may not be capable of performing its stated missions,” the Congressional Research Service (CRS) observed.

Yet, regardless of requirements, budget constraints, or the acquisition process, if there is an insufficiently skilled workforce to build ships, warship production will flounder. It was the point CBO naval analyst Eric Labs made when he said shipbuilding is in “a terrible state.” He continued: “I feel alarmed . . . I don’t see a fast, easy way to get out of this problem. It’s taken us a long time to get into it.” There is a shortage of experienced and skilled labor across the range of jobs needed to build modern US warships. Labor shortages lead to backlogs in turning out the naval vessels. Backlogs increase the time it takes to put a US battle force at sea, which drives up costs.

Shipbuilding Plan Hits Heavy Seas

The CBO’s analysis reveals that cost overruns for the current production lines run from $857 million, 15% cost growth for the Virginia Class attack submarine on the high side, to $10 million, 22% cost growth for the Najavo salvage and rescue vessel. The report explains that the “delivery times of the new ships in [the Navy’s] plan are predicated on the assumption that the production delays plaguing several shipyards today will be resolved, leading to the steady and on-time delivery of new ships in the future.” Such optimism has historically proved fleeting.

In addition to workforce problems, fundamental industrial base issues are stumbling blocks to an efficient US Navy shipbuilding program. As evidence of the misplaced optimism mentioned above, “Several of the US Navy’s top shipbuilding programs are running one year to three years behind schedule, as the service and the industrial base grapple with workforce and 

Realizing their hopes of getting warships into the operational fleets on time were fading, Navy officials conducted a 45-day assessment of naval shipbuilding. The review showed, among other revelations, that “the Navy’s Block IV Virginia submarines, which were bought from fiscal 2014 to 2018, are running 36 months behind schedule. The attack submarines rely on the same shipbuilders and suppliers as the Columbia [Class submarine] program, but they’ve taken the brunt of the delays to keep Columbia on track,” Defense News observed.

Pentagon leadership at the Department of Defense level has been slow to grasp and deal effectively with defense industrial base issues. The anemic National Defense Industrial Strategy released in February 2024 “falls short of being a strategy. At best it’s a list of concerns with little in the way of actionable goals,” Liberty Nation News reported. Getting the US Navy battle force production capable of meeting America’s wartime needs is not trivial. It takes leadership, management skills, a qualified workforce, and an industrial base to support a gigantic defense manufacturing complex. It’s a tough task, and it isn’t getting any easier.

The views expressed are those of the author and not of any other affiliate.

 

Read More From Dave Patterson

Peter Zeihan: Japan's Navy Gets Teeth

By Rich Kozlovich 

China has been playing the bully boy big kid on the block in South East Asia, demanding the world buckle under to their claim they own the South China Sea, and just about everything else within their "nine dash line".  Well, all this economic bully boy stuff has generated a backlash, and that includes Japan, and realizing they needed to alter their concept of national defense.

,

 

I read recently that China's military expenditures have now reached the level of the United States, and there's a lot of sack cloth and ashes over that.  I also believe that's being used to get more DOD dollars out of the Congress.  But I also like the fact they're spending all that money because it's money they don't have, and just like competing militarily with the United States bankrupted the Soviet Union, China's on the way down the economic drain. 

 

The Inside Story of How the Navy Spent Billions on the “Little Crappy Ship”

By Joaquin Sapien Sept. 7, 2023

Littoral combat ships were supposed to launch the Navy into the future. Instead they broke down across the globe and many of their weapons never worked. Now the Navy is getting rid of them. One is less than five years old. 

Key Takeaways:

• One Navy secretary and his allies in Congress fought to build more littoral combat ships even as they broke down at sea and their weapons systems failed. The Navy wound up with more ships than it wanted, at an estimated lifetime cost that could reach $100 billion or more. 
• The Navy’s haste to deliver ships took precedence over combat ability. Without functioning weapons systems the vessels are like a “box floating in the ocean,” one former officer said. 
•  Sailors and officers complained they spent more time fixing the ships than sailing them. The stress led many to seek mental health care. 
•  Top Navy commanders placed pressure on subordinates to sail the ships even when the crews and vessels were not fully prepared to go to sea. 
• Several major breakdowns in 2016 exposed the limits of the ships and their crews, each adding fresh embarrassment to a program meant to propel the Navy into a more technologically advanced future. 

Complicated equipment needed lot's of training. The ship’s executive officer, the second in command, complained of a lack of support from superiors.“We ask for help, but there isn’t enough,” he said, adding that he was told “they don’t have the bodies.”“I messed up everything because I was going too fast,” the sailor later explained.

 

The mistake damaged the ship’s combining gear, forcing it to sit for seven months while waiting on replacement parts.Ships were rushed to sea with faltering equipment. Shorthanded crews and captains without sufficient training or support tried to make them work. Breakdowns ensued. 

 

Then, the pressure to perform and restore the reputation of the program intensified anew and the cycle repeated itself. Foreign contractors, and often with manuals that aren't written in English. Intricate systems that failed to communicate with each other, The GAO, which has produced dozens of reports criticizing the ships, later learned that the Coronado failed to sail six times between 2016 and 2017 because “it did not not have correct parts on board to fix simple problems.”

 

Important items like “circuit card assemblies, washers, bolts, gaskets, and diaphragms for air conditioning units were not on board,” the report found. “The LCS may not have adequate space onboard to stock these items.”A month later, a fifth ship, the USS Montgomery, suffered a series of mishaps. Over a two-month stretch, its engine malfunctioned, it collided with a tugboat and it then cracked its hull after striking a lock in the Panama Canal.................“This story was originally published by ProPublica.  To Read More....Much More.....follow this link.”  

• Eight Things You Need to Know About the Navy’s Failed Multibillion-Dollar Littoral Combat Ship Program The key takeaways from ProPublica’s investigation into the decades long project that could end up costing American taxpayers more than $100 billion..............Here are eight takeaways from ProPublica’s report on the Navy’s littoral combat ship program, which has cost taxpayers billions but failed to deliver on its promise.

1. Navy officials vastly underestimated the costs to build the ship in estimates provided to Congress. The original price tag more than doubled.

Contractors were supposed to build the ships fast, in large numbers and at an original cost of $220 million each — cheap for a Navy vessel. The ships were based in part on designs for commercial car or passenger ferries. As the Navy began to apply tougher standards, costs soared.

2. The ships were supposed to be equipped with interchangeable weapons systems to allow them to fight, hunt submarines and detect mines. The Navy failed to make this happen.

Former officers said that the Navy’s haste to deliver the ships took precedence over the vessels’ combat abilities. After spending hundreds of millions, the Navy abandoned its plan to outfit the ships to find and destroy submarines; the system to hunt undersea mines is still under development. Without functioning weapons systems, one former officer said, the ship was only a “box floating in the ocean.” In response to questions, the Navy acknowledged the LCS was not suitable for fighting peer competitors such as China. The LCS “does not provide the lethality or survivability needed in a high-end fight.”

3. Scores of sailors and officers spent more time trying to fix the ships than sailing them.

Because the crews were so small, only the most elite officers and sailors were meant to sail the ships. But breakdowns meant that the ships often spent more time in port than at sea. Some sailors sought mental health assistance because of the challenges. The LCS program became known as a place where naval careers went to die. Over time, the Navy increased crew sizes on the LCS.

4. The Navy relied so heavily on contractors for maintenance and repair that sailors and officers were unable to fix their own ships.

Sailors and officers were not allowed to touch certain pieces of equipment because of complicated arrangements with Navy contractors. Cumbersome negotiations meant it could sometimes take weeks to get contractors on board. “An average week would consist of 90 to 100 hours in port doing, honestly, nothing,” one former officer said of his time. The Navy has recently increased the amount of maintenance performed by sailors.

5. A string of high-profile breakdowns at sea beginning in late 2015 laid bare the limits of the ships and their crews.

In late 2015, the USS Milwaukee broke down en route to its home port, the equivalent of a brand new car stalling on its way out of the dealership. In January 2016, the USS Fort Worth broke down when a crew of exhausted sailors failed to execute a routine procedure, costing the Navy millions in repairs. Months later, the USS Freedom saw its engine destroyed by a seawater leak. Then the USS Coronado had trouble with its water jets, followed by the USS Montgomery, which collided with a tugboat, then cracked its hull after striking a lock in the Panama Canal. Each incident added fresh embarrassment to a program meant to propel the Navy into a more technologically advanced future.

6. Top Navy commanders pressured subordinates to sail even when the crews and ships were not fully prepared to go to sea.

On the Freedom, sailors and officers understood that they had a “no fail mission” with “‘no appetite’ to remain in port.” Even though one engine was contaminated, the ship’s commander took it to sea. Afterward, the ship needed repairs that took two years to complete and cost millions. On the Fort Worth, one sailor complained that there was “no break, no reprieve, just increasing daily tasking.”

7. One Navy secretary and his allies in Congress fought to build more of the ships even as they broke down at sea and their weapons systems failed. The Navy wound up with more ships than it wanted, at an estimated lifetime cost of $100 billion.

Time and again, senior officers voiced their concerns about the ineffectiveness of the ships, yet members of Congress, the Pentagon and Navy leaders advocated for them anyway. In some cases, officers assigned to review the ships’ performance saw their careers derailed after sharing their unvarnished, critical findings.

Former Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said the Navy took the breakdowns seriously, “but it did not seem, from what we were looking at, that it was a systemic problem.”

8. Lawmakers with shipyards in their districts played a key role in expanding the program and protecting it from scrutiny.

When the Navy decided to issue contracts to build 20 littoral combat ships in two states in 2010, it encountered stiff resistance from the then-ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, John McCain, a Republican. But Sen. Richard Shelby, a Republican representing Alabama, where some of the ships were being built, slipped in an amendment that would allow the Navy to do so in a last-minute budget bill. 

“He made sure it happened,” a Shelby spokesman said at the time. Democratic Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, who was initially skeptical of the ships, supported the proposal. He said the plan to build 10 vessels at a shipyard in neighboring Wisconsin would provide “a major boost for the region’s economy.” Even after the Navy finally determined that it only needed 32 of the ships, Congress managed to fund three more.

• Despite Major Reform to Military Justice System, Navy Still Leaves Public in Dark A new law enacts sweeping changes to make prosecutions for serious offenses like sexual assault or murder more fair. The Navy is still fighting a ProPublica lawsuit to make those court cases public.........
• The Army Increasingly Allows Soldiers Charged With Violent Crimes to Leave the Military Rather Than Face TrialA federal watchdog called for ending the practice nearly 50 years ago, but the military pushed back. Now, soldiers leave the Army with a negative discharge, avoiding possible federal conviction and with little record of the allegations against them.............

My Take - First, we need to get over the idea career military people are brighter than everyone else.  In point of fact, they got promoted because they were go along get along guys, and based on my experience in the Navy, they were, over all, lazy, under bright, over educated, strutting, arrogant incompetent bullies, and this article substantiates that view, along with the corrupt politicians who supported all this obvious insanity.  As a former admiral who had concerns about all this but mostly kept quiet said: 

“As a subordinate naval officer, when your boss tells you, ‘Here’s a shovel, go dig the hole,’ you go dig the hole.”A fellow officer warned him that painting this kind of damning portrait for the highest ranking officer in the Navy, the chief naval officer, could hurt his career. At that point, the Navy had already committed to buying at least 20 more ships worth billions of dollars.Soon after, Perez was assigned to the international relations department of the Navy. About a year after that, he became liaison to the State Department. Neither are regarded as ideal assignments for an admiral who had spent a career carrying out missions at sea.

I despised most of the officers I knew.  As for the all the politicians and civilian authority that allowed this to go on, there needs to be a RICO investigation over this.   

“politics is king in the shipbuilding business.”

I had a couple of officers I worked for I actually thought were good leaders, mostly because they left us alone to do our work without harassment.  It's the senior enlisted personnel who make the Navy work, and a good officer recognizes that and doesn't interfere except to support those actually doing the work.

A friend of mine was a graduate of the Air Force Academy, and he said one of his room mates made the Air Force a career and became a two start general.  He also said was one of the dumbest members of his class.   

Col. John Boyd is one of my personal heroes, who became a legend spending his career fighting with the generals over this kind of  stupid, expensive boondoggle thinking.  So none of this is surprising, except for the massive costs involved.  Even I didn't think they were that stupid.

I've been criticized for my views of officers, and now we're seeing how the military has been corrupted by all these nitwits, and in the case of military officers, they swore an oath to support the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic, but in reality there were nothing but heretics worshiping at the secular alter of the Church of Wokeness and it's destroying America's military.  

And whaddaya know, the bug man was right once again.  Imagine that.

 

While Navy Pushes 'Pride', a Third of Attack Subs Are Out of Order

By Daniel Greenfield July 18, 2023 @ Sultan Knish Blog 

On June 16, 2023, a date which will live in infamy, the Pearl Harbor base featured the story of Lt. Nick Grant, an “out gay cisgender man” who was a co-chair of the Naval Medical Force Pacific Transgender Care Team (NMFP TGCT).

The title of the Pride Month feature was “serving with pride”.

The Navy’s medical service, which can’t seem to do anything about active duty personnel killing themselves, has multiple “transgender care teams” for different regions composed of multiple specialists for different areas to “oversee and, in many cases, provide mental health, hormonal, and surgical interventions as needed to facilitate the gender transition process.”

There are some who say that the Navy ought to be focused on other things. Like getting its submarines to work. In the latest numbers, nearly 40% of attack subs are out of commission.

With only 31 subs operationally ready, the US Navy is more unready than ever to face off against the People’s Liberation Army Submarine Force of Communist China.

In 2017, 28% of submarines were out of commission. By 2022, it was 33%, and now it’s 37%. At the rate that the woke Naval brass are going, most subs will soon be out of order.

Under Biden, the number of operational nuclear powered attack subs has never gone above 33 out of 49. A third of our submarine attack fleet being out of order has become the new normal.

If only the Navy could repair subs as quickly as its transgender care teams castrate sailors.

As the U.S. Pacific Fleet (SUBPAC) commander responsible for 37 attack and ballistic missile submarines, Rear Admiral J.T. Jablon is “committed to broadening the diversity, equity, and inclusion of our Submarine Force”.

“Diverse representation without equity and inclusion degrades our readiness. Barriers to inclusion are the unconscious biases we carry without our awareness,” J.T. Jablon claimed in the official DEI statement. Everyone in the submarine fleet must be subjected to racial struggle sessions and political indoctrination, opportunities must be awarded based on race.

Not only hasn’t DEI improved readiness, but submarine readiness has drastically dropped.

“Diversity and inclusion are cornerstones of high organizational performance and mission effectiveness,” J.T. Jablon argued. The state of the submarine fleet proves otherwise.

The Navy is more diverse than ever. Pride Month is celebrated at American naval bases all across the Pacific. And even the most basic functions of the fleet are out of order.

When Biden nominated Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro, a Democrat fundraiser, the former contractor was supposed to untangle the supply chain issues. But his company, SBG, benefited from government contracts as a “minority-owned business and a service disabled veteran owned small business” and he’s shown no ability to fix the Navy’s problems.

Del Toro, who had served on the Naval Academy Alumni Association’s Special Commission on Culture, Diversity, and Inclusion to purge political dissent, announced that his focus would be on China, Culture, Climate, and COVID. The US Navy is going green and promised that, like California, it would reach “net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050”.

The Navy’s 2023 budget wastes $718 million on fighting global warming. That’s more than 10% of the $6.2 billion in maintenance costs for 151 Navy vessels. If the Navy focused as much on getting its vessels operational as it does on global warming, identity politics and other partisan leftist causes, we would have subs in the water and have nothing to fear from China.

Instead, China is laughing while the US Navy commits to “100 percent zero-emission vehicles by 2035” and “100 percent carbon pollution-free electricity” and has partly achieved its goal by having “37 percent zero-emission attack submarines” sitting and doing nothing.

“They have 13 shipyards, in some cases their shipyard has more capacity — one shipyard has more capacity than all of our shipyards combined. That presents a real threat,” Del Toro observed of China’s shipyards. We could have shipyards too, but they ‘emit’ things.

At a Naval diversity summit, Secretary Del Toro told senior leaders that, “in order to maintain our strategic edge, the Navy and Marine Corps team must operationalize innovative and cohesive initiatives, rooted in DEI’s goals.” Our strategic edge is blunted, the fleet is failing and our capabilities are falling behind China while our military operationalizes leftist political agendas.

Instead of working on vessels, the Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard urges everyone to become an “ally” and consult “reputable sources like the Trevor Project, the Human Rights Campaign, and GLAAD.”

Meanwhile, a GAO report found that ‘steaming hours’ for Navy vessels had consistently decreased even as the DOD treated the number of the decreased as classified information. Navy officials responded to the maintenance backlogs, not by improving performance, but by trying to decommission and reduce the number of ships in the fleet to improve the numbers.

In 2019, more than half of the aircraft carriers were not ready to deploy. The US Navy is already badly backed up just repairing ships on routine deployments. In the event of a naval military conflict, another GAO report found that it would be absolutely overwhelmed.

The GAO report stated that the Navy “is in the early stages of determining how it will provide battle damage repair during a great power conflict.” The Navy has spent far more time thinking about how it will implement DEI programs and castration opportunities for sailors than it has how it will cope with repairing battle damage during a war.

The shipyards are not ready with “more than half the equipment at the shipyards is past its expected service life.” The submarines are not ready, with only 31 mission capable attack subs. And the fleet is not ready for a military conflict with a GAO report warning that “the Navy could handle a single battle damage event,” but they were “uncertain how the Navy might handle multiple simultaneous or near-simultaneous events”. But the DEI indoctrination is ready.

92% of ship fires may be going unreported, but Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Michael Gilday is on track with his true mission. “My goal is to put the Navy in a place over the next 20 years where we’re the most diverse service in the DoD,” Gilday told the State of the Navy.

China’s goal is to have the largest Navy in the world. After achieving that goal in 2020, it has kept on building and aims to have 400 vessels. But we will have the most diverse Navy. Our ships won’t work, but our struggle sessions will. We won’t win any wars except on ourselves.

The People’s Republic of China may take pride in ruling the seas, but we’ll take pride in Pride.

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine.Click here to subscribe to my articles.  Thank you for reading.

As China War Looms, Navy’s Priority is Going ‘Green’

Daniel Greenfield March 26, 2023 @ Sultan Knish Blog

The “age of American naval dominance is over”, Jerry Hendix, a former Navy Captain warned in a high-profile article in The Atlantic.

Hendrix’s article imagines a scenario in which China or other enemy nations seize control of what are now international waters and the cargo that moves across them. “The great container ships and tankers of today would disappear, replaced by smaller, faster cargo vessels capable of moving rare and valuable goods past pirates and corrupt officials.” A handful of nations would end up controlling the chokepoints of international trade and America would not be one of them.

Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro has already conceded China’s naval supremacy.

Last month, the Biden appointee stated that China has “got a larger fleet now so they’re deploying that fleet globally.”

The People’s Liberation Army Navy topped the US Navy in 2020. By 2025, it will have an estimated 400 ships. We’re still below 300.

Biden’s current defense plan is to have 350 by 2045. And by then we will have lost.

“They have 13 shipyards, in some cases their shipyard has more capacity — one shipyard has more capacity than all of our shipyards combined. That presents a real threat,” Del Toro conceded. “They’re a communist country, they don’t have rules by which they abide by.”

We don’t have China’s shipyard capacity because it isn’t a priority. Biden’s Navy budget would buy 9 ships and retire 24. That means we’ll be down to 280 by 2027. The administration has plenty of money, with over $1 billion directed to Afghanistan aid, hundreds of millions for the ‘Palestinians’, and foreign aid for every one of our enemies, but plans for a shrinking military.

Communist China has its priorities, but so do Biden and Del Toro.

“As the Secretary of the Navy, I can tell you that I have made climate one of my top priorities since the first day I came into office,” Del Tore declared a week after admitting that China had taken the naval lead and would hold on to it for the conceivable future.

The Navy’s 2023 budget wastes $718 million on fighting global warming. That’s more than 10% of the $6.2 billion in maintenance costs for 151 Navy vessels.

China’s Communist leadership is focused on building warships to win a war, ours isn’t.

What does it mean that under Biden, the Navy has made global warming into its priority?

Last year, the Navy joined California and assorted failed blue states in committing to “net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050”. Net Zero emissions is an impossibility. In practice it means wasting a fortune on buying carbon credits from politically connected leftist companies. It also means that we will not be quickly and efficiently constructing warships because that’s not ‘green’. Winning wars isn’t green either, losing them however might be.

A Navy official absurdly claimed that, “to remain the world’s dominant maritime force, the Department of the Navy must adapt to climate change.” Going ‘green’ means that being a dominant marine force is not the priority. Much like diversity, equity and inclusion, which the woke brass have taken to claiming will improve our deadliness, it’s a betrayal of the mission.

China, which is rapidly becoming the dominant marine force, doesn’t give a damn about adapting to climate change except when it comes to peddling its junk solar panels assembled by slave labor to woke companies that will resell them at a massive markup while gobbling up tax credits because when we go ‘green’, it only weakens us and strengthens our enemies.

Communist China aims for a ‘victory-ready’ force while Biden’s after a ‘climate-ready’ force.

While China builds warships to achieve naval dominance in the next decade, the US Navy’s goal for the next decade is to have “100 percent zero-emission vehicles by 2035” and “100 percent carbon pollution-free electricity”. No word on whether firing torpedoes will also be carbon-pollution free, but that’s not a problem for a leadership that never intends to use them.

There will be “hybrid-propulsion” for naval vessels and more money lavished on “green fuels”.

Apart from the massive waste of money, hybrid systems are more expensive and more prone to breakdowns. Forcing ground vehicles to rely on lithium batteries comes with more expensive maintenance costs and worse operations in extreme weather. All of this pandering to green special interests not only corruptly steals money from national defense, but puts lives at risk.

Del Toro claims that the problem with our shipbuilding capacity is that, unlike China, we don’t use slave labor, but during WWII, we built a massive fleet in a short time with no slaves. But that was an age in which skyscrapers could also be built in a year. It was also a time when there were no environmental reviews and we focused on the mission, not corrupt woke politics.

Under the Democrats, politics, from DEI to climate goals, is the mission: winning isn’t.

The People’s Liberation Army Navy is not investing in “low-carbon fuels” or electric cars for its personnel. Instead it’s been busy holding drills with Iran and South Africa in a matter of a few weeks to show off a growing ability to operate on a global scale with its international allies.

While our military brass obsessed over diversity, equity and inclusion, the PRC turned the South China Sea into its own private backyard, enabling it to potentially cut off traffic to the United States. China has built up chains of islands studded with its naval outposts so that its fighter jets and anti-ship and anti-aircraft missiles now encompass not only the coasts of Taiwan and China, but much of the coastlines of everything from Thailand to Malaysia to the Philippines.

The People’s Republic of China has military goals, our military now only has political goals.

The US Navy brass claim that “leveraging our diversity is the key to reaching the Navy’s peak potential” and that their priority is changing the weather and fighting global warming.

China’s priority isn’t fighting the weather, it’s fighting us.

 

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine. Click here to subscribe to my articles. And click here to support my work with a donation. Thank you for reading.

Uncategorized USS Constellation: The Aircraft Carrier That Was ‘America’s Flagship’

By Rich Kozlovich

I came across this today, and I'm not sure what it is about Man O' War ships and men, but there's a strange bond of affection I can't explain, especially if you served, and as I read this, I felt it, and thought it worth publishing.  

"On August 7, 2003, USS Constellation was officially decommissioned after forty-one years, nine months and eleven days of naval service. Since her commissioning, nearly 120,000 Sailors and Marines had served aboard the ship, while the arresting gear aboard had amassed an impressive 436,000 traps or landings. She was sold for scrapping, which was completed in May 2017 when the last propeller shaft strut was pulled from the water"

To Read More.

A sailor’s life: Overworked, undertrained, understaffed, stressed out

by Jamie McIntyre February 24, 2022

A new GAO report on Navy ship maintenance is a recruiter’s worst nightmare. It depicts the harsh realities of life on U.S. Navy ships from the enlisted sailor’s perspective — working 16-hour days, patching together obsolete equipment, cannibalizing other ships for repair parts, serving on ships that are understaffed with sailors who are overworked or under trained.

The Feb. 8 report from the Government Accountability Office follows another GAO report released last May that concluded the Navy routinely assigns fewer crew members than required to ships and found in the four years between 2016 and 2020 that crew shortfalls nearly doubled, increasing from 8% to 15%.

Add to that more than 85% of officers who report they don’t get the recommended seven hours of sleep a day during deployments, with two-thirds getting five hours or less, and it’s a prescription for burnout........To Read More....

 My Take - So what exactly is DOD Secretary Austin doing about this?  He's weeding out the "white supremacists" and anyone who won't take these experimental drugs for covid. 

What could possibly go wrong?  

 

So the Navy is crumbling, and admittedly, the Brits did beat our Marines in an exercise - half way through the exercise - and our Air Force is facing the same problems, as the Navy, and we're expecting our military to to face down Russia and China?  Absolutely!!!!  Here's all it takes.   A picture or two of Biden eating ice cream, which will scare the pants off them, and getting rid of all the "deplorables" in our services, and everything will be just fine.  Ya see, in these new modern military minds numbers don't count, competence doesn't count, good equipment doesn't count and sufficient maintenance doesn't count.  Only diversity, inclusion and equity counts.  Boy, knowing that..... I really feel safe now. 

What could possibly go wrong?

 

'Every officer is up to speed on diversity training. Not so much ship handling'

Scathing official report finds US Navy is too woke for war because of risk averse, politically correct, control-freak top brass  

• Members of Congress commissioned the report on issues in the surface 
• Navy Came in response to fire on ship in San Diego and two ship collisions in Pacific 
• Retired Marine general and Navy admiral spoke with current and former officers 
• They identified a number of disturbing trends in Navy leadership and training 
• Many officers said that diversity training took precedence over warfighting 
• They claimed combat readiness had become a 'box-checking' exercise 

 By Keith Griffith For Dailymail.com Published: 10:58 EDT, 13 July 2021

A scathing new report commissioned by members of Congress has claimed that the Navy's surface warfare forces have systemic training and leadership issues, including a focus on diversity that overshadows basic readiness skills.

The report prepared by Marine Lt. Gen. Robert Schmidle and Rear Adm. Mark Montgomery, both retired, came in response to recent Naval disasters, including the burning of the USS Bonhomme Richard in San Diego, two collisions involving Navy ships in the Pacific and the surrender of two small craft to Iran.  The authors conducted hour-long interviews with 77 current and retired Navy officers, offering them anonymity to identify issues they wouldn't feel comfortable raising in the chain of command.  The report found that a staggering 94 percent of the subjects believed the recent Naval disasters were 'part of a broader problem in Navy culture or leadership.' 

'I guarantee you every unit in the Navy is up to speed on their diversity training. I'm sorry that I can't say the same of their ship handling training,' said one recently retired senior enlisted leader............Some of the respondents expressed concerns that when combat lethality and warfighting are emphasized, they are treated in a box-checking manner that can seem indistinguishable from non-combat related exercises..... Former Secretary of the Navy John Lehman made the startling claim that of the four key admirals who led the Navy to victory in World War II, none would make the rank of captain in today's fleet.  'Nimitz put his first command on the rocks,' Lehman said. 'And Halsey was constantly getting into trouble for bending the rules or drinking too much…Ernie King was a womanizer and a heavy drinker'............'Commanders can no longer take risks in a way that they can have small failures, learn, and move forward,' said one sailor. 'Failures are terminal to people's careers.' ............The report argues that the independence of command has been eroded and commanding officers fear risk due to its adverse impact upon their careers. .............Another issued identified in the report is a perceived fear among Navy leaders of any negative news articles.....................

At one point, the Navy even handed officers 23 compact discs with reading material for surface warfare wardroom training, replacing a five-month course at the Surface Warfare Officer School Division Officer's Course in Rhode Island..........'We gave ensigns boxes of CDs and told them to train themselves between watches, and that was a colossal failure,' one officer recalled. ........... Report suggests Navy is ill-prepared for major conflict with China........'Unless changes are made, the Navy risks losing the next major conflict.' ...........To Read More....

Three-nation naval drill in South China Sea

Tuesday, July 21

Japan's Maritime Self-Defense Force says it is currently conducting a joint military exercise with the US and Australian navies in areas including the South China Sea.  The MSDF on Tuesday announced that its destroyer Teruzuki, the American aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan, and an Australian amphibious assault ship are taking part along with six other vessels.

The drill began on Sunday. The MSDF says that the defense officials of the three countries are simulating various battle scenarios in Asia-Pacific waters from the South China Sea to the sea off Guam and are checking the role of each ship, and the ability to share information.

The US Navy revealed that earlier this month it had deployed two aircraft carriers to the South China Sea in two different drills. The ongoing multinational drill could be aimed at emphasizing the cooperation of the three countries as the United States has been increasing pressure on China's growing military presence in the region..... .To Read More....

Navy Sacrificing Readiness on the Altar of Politics

By Dr. Jay Lehr and Tom Harris April 28th, 2020 @ America Out Loud


Is the US Navy now more about politics than maintaining an effective fighting force? Recent events certainly suggest it is.

By now everyone knows the story of how Captain Brett Crozier of the U.S. Naval Aircraft Carrier Theodore Roosevelt was fired by Acting Secretary of The Navy Thomas Modley for writing him a letter, which was leaked to the press, insisting Crozier be allowed to make an unplanned docking to off-load sailors on Guam who had contracted COVID-19.

Captain Brett Crozier

Modley said Crozier was not fit for command because he did not take proper steps to ensure that no leak could occur. Modley followed up with a vitriolic speech to the ship’s crew, and then resigned under pressure a few days later. It shocked the nation and, as of this writing, over 400,000 Americans have signed a petition asking that Captain Crozier be reinstated.

Few of us understand today’s Navy well enough to see how such mismanagement could almost be expected. Thanks to two retired Navy Captains, James L. McClane and Kevin Eyer, writing last October in the Navy’s Maritime Executive we can begin to understand.

It is really all about the worst kind of politics taking over what once the world’s greatest sea power.

When Americans think of our Navy, we invariable see a fighting fleet at the ready to protect our nation with battleships, aircraft carriers, destroyers, submarines, cargo ships and the many service craft that keep them all in fighting readiness. The lead author of this article, Dr. Jay Lehr, had the honor of serving on a number of them during seventeen years on active and reserve duty.

The crux of the problem today is an unprecedented increase in politically-appointed high ranking naval officers. They are known as Flag Officers, having the right to fly the Navy flag wherever they may be. They include Admirals of all levels who have risen above the senior sea-going rank of Captain. In 1997, the total number of these senior naval officers, reasonably equaled the number of active ships plying the ocean. Today as the number of ships has shrunk by nearly a third, the number of Flag Officers has increased an incredible 32-fold.

Imagine that we fought World War II with only the same number of flag officers as we had ships. The Captains of these ships were men trusted to run the Navy with paper, pencils, dial telephones, voice radio, flashing lights and good seamanship. Today a good case can be made that our Navy could not stand up to the Navy of the 1940s. One only has to look to a significant number of Navy ships colliding in recent years.

Two primary reasons for the expanding bureaucracy are that most Admirals want an expanding work force and these officials make work for each other. In 2010 the then Secretary of Navy, Robert Gates, called for the elimination of 100 Flag Officers in what he called his “Efficiency Initiative”. He was completely thwarted at the Pentagon in this effort.

In May of 2013 the General Accounting Office (GAO) found the number of support staff increased by 50% between 2001 and 2012. This created added distance between commanders and warfighters. Secretary Gates said that:

“in some cases, the gap between me and an action officer could be as high as 30 layers resulting in a bureaucracy with the fine motor skills of a dinosaur”.
 

The Navy is ready with excuses. They are required by law to have joint exercises with other services. There is also an increased focus on working with other nations. Proof of these needs are missing as the Navy did all these things in World War II and we won without a glut of senior officers.

There is no question that the military is more sophisticated today than in the past but it does not come close to justifying what it has become. For example, why is there no statistical correlation with active ships or the number of sailors?

This disproportional growth in flag officers is very worrisome as it has corresponded with a decline in readiness which appears to have been unnoticed until recently when many were taken by surprise that ships have been poorly maintained, trained and sailed without required certifications, all of which was documented by Captains McClane and Eyer in their Maritime Executive article.

It seems the Navy has less and less to do with the active fleet and more to do with politics. A case in point was raised by Asia Times in “Blunders eroded US military edge in Pacific” (September 18, 2019), in which they described the results of The United States Studies Center at the University of Sydney (Australia) report, “Averting Crisis: American Strategy, Military Spending and Collective Defense in the Indo-Pacific.” The Times writes, “The report correctly describes America’s eroded military edge in the Indo-Pacific – such that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army even outmatches US forces in certain areas.” The Asia Times then asks a poignant question:

“But while the US has a strong hand there’s something missing, and the University of Sydney report overlooks it as well. That is the human element and how inept leadership – military and civilian – got the US military into the current crisis in the Indo-Pacific. How else does one explain a PACOM commander declaring climate change his biggest worry – not the People Liberation Army – and a Navy secretary prioritizing “green fuels” over arming US ships with anti-ship missiles that go as far and as fast as the Chinese navy’s missiles?”
 

It would appear that the cause of ineffective leadership may lie with criteria used to select flag officers over many years. Less important is sustained superior performance at sea and more a matter of what you could do for us in Washington, DC if we make you an Admiral.
McClane and Eyer maintain

“it is commonly understood that, regardless of record, an officer without substantial experience in Washington is unlikely to move beyond a first command. Those officers stay with the fleet. Without also keeping a weather eye on good Washington tours and an associated accretion of, powerful advocates, end up being viewed by boards as insufficiently broad which is tantamount to non-selection.”
 

It seems to be all about influencing a budget, increasing manpower, connections to industry and Congress, how to employ power, loyalty to Navy policy, not how to defend the nation. Maintaining a ship, anti-submarine warfare, tactical warfare appear to be relatively unimportant.

This surely led to the disgraceful manner in which Captain Brett Crozier was handled. Reducing the power of a now entrenched bureaucracy is never easy, but if we ever have to fight on the seas it must be done.

Iran’s IRGC Head: Any US Navy Vessel That Threatens Our Ships Will be Attacked

By Patrick Goodenough | April 24, 2020

The head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said Thursday the force’s maritime units have been ordered to attack any U.S. Navy ship that threatens the security of Iranian military or civilian vessel.

The comments further escalate tensions, after President Trump warned earlier that Iranian gunboats that “harass” U.S. ships would be destroyed. 

“We are fully determined and serious in defending our national security, maritime borders, maritime interests, maritime security and security of our forces at sea,” the Tasnim news agency quoted IRGC chief Maj. Gen. Hossein Salami as saying.  He added that any wrong move by Iran’s enemies “will meet our decisive, effective and prompt response.”..........To Read More....

My Take - Yeah, well, the fact is - Obama isn't President any longer and "Swift Boat" Kerry is no longer Sec. of State.  Now the thugs and tyrants are dealing with men. 

Hello world, there's a new sheriff in town. 

These are the people Feinstein, and the Senate Terror Caucus (Chris Murphy and Dick Blumenthal, Schatz, Van Hollen,  Udall,  Cardin, Kaine, Leahy, Merkley, Carper) who want America to lower economic sanctions because according to them, “the right thing to do from a national security perspective.”  

The're insane, and they're not alone.  There's a House Terror Caucus also. 

"Signatories to the letter calling for Iranian access to the banking sector, which it has used to fund terrorism, and to export oil, likewise, included longstanding members of the Democrat Senate and House Terror Caucus including Senator Elizabeth Warren, Senator Ed Markey, Rep. Joaquin Castro, Rep. Barbara Lee, Rep. Marc Pocan, Rep. Ayanna Pressley, Rep. Gerry Connolly, Rep. Rashida Tlaib, Rep. Pramila Jayapal, Rep. Debbie Dingell, Rep. Ro Khanna, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, and, Rep. Hank Johnson: who had compared Jews to termites."

That's the Congressional Terror Caucus.  Definition leads to clearity.

Trump Instructs Navy to 'Destroy' Hostile Iranian Gunboats

Leah Barkoukis  Apr 22, 2020

President Trump announced on Twitter Wednesday that he instructed the U.S. Navy to “destroy” hostile Iranian gunboats.   “I have instructed the United States Navy to shoot down and destroy any and all Iranian gunboats if they harass our ships at sea,” he said. ............The move comes after an incident in the Persian Gulf last week between U.S. warships and Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Navy vessels..........To Read More....

We'll Always Have Paris, but Not Beijing

July 7, 2019 By Michael Curtis

Two centuries ago, the renowned economist Adam Smith wrote of China as "one of the richest, most fertile, best cultivated, most industrious countries in the world." Today, China is anxious to be the dominant economic and military power in the world, an ideological rival of the U.S., attempting to spread its tools of authoritarian controls and communications around the world.

The true face of the Chinese political regime emerged in responding in June 2019 to the protesters in Hong Kong opposing the bill that would allow suspects to be extradited to trials and the legal system in mainland China, which is notable for arbitrary detentions, torture, and human rights violations. Not only did Beijing and local authorities respond with force and arrests against the protesters, but Chinese spokespersons also accused the U..K of a "colonial mindset" haunting the minds of some of its officials or politicians, and Western agitators for "meddling" in the internal affairs of China.

Britain was simply defending the 1997 legally binding agreement that gave Hong Kong, in which there are 300,000 U.K. nationals, the right to rule itself and retain its independent legal system............To Read More...

Peter Zeihan on Geopolitics: The American Retreat, Part I: Oil

By Peter Zeihan @ Geopolitics

I’m going to do something I loathe and quote something I read on Twitter June 24. In a pair of posts U.S. President Donald Trump asserted:





Diction and statistical issues aside, these tweets comprise the 92 most important words used by anyone in the past three decades. Trump just made clear the days of America protecting global shipping – particularly of oil shipping in the Middle East – are over.

There is an easy argument to be made that the United States’ shale revolution will make the United States a net exporter of crude oil in the current calendar year, but to understand just how critical that is for the Americans we must first pick apart just how horrible that is for everyone else.

Let’s talk importance:

In the pre-Order world if you couldn’t obtain fossil fuels yourself, first coal and later oil, you failed to industrialize. Your manufacturing would at most be a step above cottage industries, so no mass education and no consumer goods (aka peasantry and mass poverty). Lack of fuel condemned you to having an at-best rudimentary transport system meaning your cities were very small, only able to exist in regions that could grow their own food (aka high living costs and low quality of life).

The handful of locations that could secure fossil fuels – either by producing it locally or by seizing it from others – could advance into something we today recognize to broadly mean “civilization,” which includes among other things homes that don’t leak and gadgets and full bellies.

This all changed in the late 1940s. After World War II the Americans created a global Order – a mix of security and trade guarantees which they used as a bribe to induce others to join their side in the Cold War against the Soviet Union. With global security now a thing, oil could be shipped safely and at volume without military escort, meaning that countries that didn’t have a military capable of escorting could now access fossil fuels. BAM! Civilization goes global.

Remove the Order, remove global oil markets, and civilization itself goes into screaming reverse in any location that lacks either the ability to produce oil locally, or the ability to venture forth and secure someone else’s.

Let’s talk vulnerability:

Crude tankers are huge. A modern supertanker can shuttle around oil weighing more than four Nimitz-class aircraft carriers. They are so big expressly because of the Order.

Pre-Order, merchant shipping used small, fast vessels because they needed to be able to scatter and hopefully outrun predators whether those predators wore eyepatches or naval uniforms. The Order ended such predation under the watchful eye of the U.S. Navy. Instead of commercial advantage coming as a result of speed and distributed risk, it instead came from efficiencies and economies of scale. Ships evolved to became slower to save on fuel costs, and bigger to get more bang for the buck. Today’s oil tankers are the slowest and biggest of them all and are nearly 50 times the size of some of the biggest cargo ships of the WWII era.

A similar logic holds with ports: size generates economies of scale. In addition, as ships have gotten larger, ports had to expand to match – a city with a small dock simply cannot handle a ship that is longer than the Empire State building is tall. Bigger, slower ships forced fewer, larger ports. Disrupt anything within the system and the damage quickly becomes extreme.

Between oil’s criticality to and ubiquitousness in modern life, oil is by far the most commonly traded product on Earth comprising some 18% of all maritime shipping traffic (by volume). About a third of all waterborne crude and product shipments originate in the Persian Gulf.

Let’s talk stickiness:

There are no shortages of politicians out there who agitate for relocating manufacturing capacity to their countries, provinces or cities. Making a speech is one thing, but actually building industrial plant and infrastructure is another. It costs billions and takes years for large industrial shifts, and even then there is no guarantee that a new industrial park will prove economically viable.

But at least manufacturing can be relocated. Commodity production cannot. Either you have it or you don’t, and the Persian Gulf has the greatest concentrations and volumes of easily-produced conventional crude oil on the planet. It can never not matter.

There’s also the impossibility of substitution.

Simply put, greentech isn’t ready. Most advances in greentech have to do with electricity generation, and since so few countries burn oil for electricity greentech’s impact upon oil markets has been negligible. As a rule greentech is shit for transport. High cost combined with insufficient energy density makes electric cars little more than a niche sector for early adopters, with Tesla’s recent sales figures crash indicating that market may already be saturated.

Even if the medium for most modern batteries – lithium – was sufficiently energy-dense to provide a viable long-term improvement in capacity (it isn’t), the stuff still needs to be mined and processed and fabricated into battery assemblies. Each step along the value-chain is so energy- and transport-intensive that very little of it can even be attempted without fossil-fuel-based energy for processing and transport across the world. As counterintuitive as it sounds, we need more carbon-heavy fuels to get to a lighter-carbon world. And that means coal and oil. A lot of oil.

There’s also the issue of lifespan. Most vehicles put on the roads since 1990 have a long lifespan to the point that even if every passenger vehicle sold from now on was an EV, we’d not see an end to oil in passenger transport for another two decades. Even then, even if every passenger vehicle and light truck were an EV right now, that would only make a dent in global oil demand. About 2/5ths of oil is used for transporting people and heating. The rest is much more difficult to do away with. Another 1/3rd is used for air transport, industry, and other modes that require far more range or power than electric engines can manage. And another 1/5th isn’t going anywhere ever, as it is what makes petrochemicals as varied as paints, plastics and pesticides possible.

(None of which means greentech won’t eventually solve the petroleum problem, but all of which means technology needs another couple decades to give it a go – and even that assumes the capital and educational structures around the world which have made the Digital Revolution possible hold steady at their current historical highs.)

Let’s talk protection:

At the end of World War II every nation of consequence aside from the United Kingdom had lost its navy. The United States in essence inherited the global ocean. America’s creation of the Order gave everyone aside from the Soviets a vested economic interest in not floating a new one. Fast forward to today and the American Navy is over ten times as powerful as the combined blue water fleets of every other country combined. Putting that force disconnect at the service of the global commons is what makes the Order work, and what makes global energy shipments and markets possible.

The world’s second- through sixth-most powerful navies in terms of long-range power projection are (roughly in order) Japan, the United Kingdom, France, China, and Russia. Of these only Russia need not sail forth for oil, as it has plenty of its own. France and the United Kingdom can secure what they need from the North Sea and North and West Africa. China has only 30  combat-capable surface ships of size that can effectively operate over 1000 miles from shore; unfortunately (for the Chinese) Southern China is a cool 5800 or so miles distant from the Persian Gulf. Only India – keeper of the world’s seventh-strongest navy – is even remotely proximate.

End result? Today’s oil markets comprise the greatest concentration of risk in the most critical economic sector at the most vulnerable part of the global system and no one can do anything about it if the Americans leave.

And that’s just the beginning.

By the way, for more on oil’s role in a world without American strategic oversight, I’m happy to refer you to my 2016 book, The Absent Superpower: the Shale Revolution and a World Without America. 

BOOK PETER FOR YOUR NEXT EVENT

BUY A SIGNED COPY OF THE ABSENT SUPERPOWER

Callous Mistreatment of Navy Veterans

Mark Hyman February 6, 2018

An open letter to the Chief of Navy Personnel.

Vice Admiral Robert P. Burke, USN

Chief of Navy Personnel
Navy Personnel Command
5720 Integrity Drive
Millington, TN 38055

Dear Admiral Burke:
 

I have anticipated writing this letter for more than a year.  Like countless other veterans, I spent my entire Navy career struggling with the customer-unfriendly Navy Personnel Command. There was little doubt I’d reach this point in what should be my final communication with NPC.  Let me bring you up to speed. I served 35 years in the military. All but one year was in the Navy. One-third of that time was on active duty and the rest was in the reserves. I retired after 30 years of commissioned service as a Captain (O-6)............In the three decades I served in the military, I attended more leadership training seminars than I could ever count that addressed the importance of taking care of our people. Clever little catchphrases are emblazoned on commissary shopping bags. Signs adorn office walls claiming people are the Navy’s greatest resource. But every service member realizes this is merely lip-service. That’s because no one is ever held accountable for mistreating their people including both service members and their families. The scandals at the Veterans Administration highlight this reality.............To Read More....

My Take - Well, an officer of command rank is now being treated the way the officer corp treated the enlisted men.  Contemptuously!  Those of us who were enlisted men never had any illusions about how the Navy officer corp felt about us.  I hated the officers when I was in the Navy and I still hate the officers, but this is an issue that impacts everyone and someone needs to get in there an dump a bunch of people and systems.  He's right.  All they should need from a retired military man is a 3X5 card.  But this red tape issue is a massive problem Navy wide.  My question is - what did he do about it when he was serving?  Answer: Nothing!

There are two groups of people who are generally considered leaders.  Military officers and Ph.D'.s, and that's simply not so.  Show me a Ph.D. candidate who tells everyone during his oral dissertation their views are all wrong - and proves it - and I will show you a candidate who is a career Masters degree.  Show me a lower ranking officer who tells his superiors they're wrong and proves it and I will show you a permanent lower ranking officer, if he's even allowed to have a military career.

Give them a mission and they're great.  If that mission is possible - they'll get it done.  Ask them to be the rock in the current, and you're wasting your time as they've spent a lifetime going along to get a long, and they're incapable of standing against the conventional wisdom. 

The Navy Swamp Needs Draining Too

From Obama-style social engineering to rampant corruption, the Navy is in trouble.

Arnold Ahlert · Nov. 9, 2017 

The Navy is sailing in very troubled waters.

A scathing Navy report released Nov. 2 reveals that two major collisions — one between the USS Fitzgerald and merchant ship ACX Crystal off the Japanese coast on June 17 that killed 17 sailors and another between the USS John McCain and oil tanker Alnic MC near Singapore on Aug. 20 that killed another 10 — were caused by “fundamental failures to responsibly plan, prepare and execute ship activities to avoid undue operational risk.”

The USS Fitzgerald’s collision was precipitated by a “compilation of failures by leadership and watchstanders,” including lookout crews who “were inattentive, disengaged in developments on the Bridge, and unaware of several nearby vessels.” As a result they “failed to visually differentiate between two vessels in close proximity” while “attempting to cross a highly congested sea lane at night.”

Moreover the Officer of the Deck, the person responsible for safe navigation of the ship, “exhibited poor seamanship by failing to maneuver as required, failing to sound the danger signal and failing to attempt to contact CRYSTAL on Bridge to Bridge radio,” the report states. The officer also failed to “call the Commanding Officer as appropriate and prescribed by Navy procedures to allow him to exercise more senior oversight and judgment of the situation.”.........

And funding has nothing to do with a massive corruption scandal encompassing as many as 440 Navy personnel, current and retired — including at least 60 admirals — under investigation for their involvement with Malaysian contractor Leonard “Fat Leonard” Glenn Francis. Francis allegedly provided Navy personnel with cash kickbacks and “wild times” in return for receiving classified information and contracts................Thus the ongoing effort to embrace progressive dogma proceeds, even if military readiness and people lives are sacrificed as a result.................And commanders in every branch of the military who disagree should be sent packing.............To Read More....


 

Legendary Enterprise Decommissioned

The Canadian PressFebruary 3, 2017

The U.S. Navy has officially decommissioned the world's first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier.

During Friday's ceremony at a Newport News shipyard, the USS Enterprise was described as a "legendary" vessel that helped shape history. It served more than 50 years, playing a role in the Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.   Affectionately called the "Big E," the ship retired from service in 2012.......To Read More....

 

My Take - I never served on the Enterprise, but I was assigned TAD to the USS Chicago during the Veitnam War.  The Chi-town was serving in the Gulf of Tonkin off the coast of N. Vietnam when the Pueblo was captured in January of 1968, forty nine years ago. 

 

We were just ending a line period and instead of going to Sasebo, Japan for R&R, we were sent to Korea.  Before proceeding to outside of Wonson Harbor, North Korea (many miles outside I might add) we rendezvoused with the task force and the Enterprise around the 38th parallel, if I remember this correctly.  She was holding flight ops when we got there and I think it was A6's taking off from her deck - those are big planes - and it amazed me they didn't drop into the briny.  You couldn't help being impressed - she looked like a Man-of-War. 

 

At any rate - she was special.  Imagine - 50 years!  Hard to believe it's gone by that fast.