Panetta's proposed budget with the new military cuts

[Delvo]

http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=66940

Mostly it's just the predictable details of what happens when you have to shrink the armed services in general: fewer troops, fewer amphibious assault ships, fewer cruisers, fewer cargo planes, fewer tactical planes, no big shock there. The amphibious assault ships might be interesting if they'd been cut on their own because their function is more offense than defense, but they're not the only thing being cut here. But the shrinkage isn't even, and anything that doesn't get cut ends up increased in a proportional sense, relative to the other stuff being cut around it. Just a few bits that stood out to me:

maintaining the number of big-deck carriers

I thought these might get cut, and they shouldn't, so this is not a bad start. They're the most important ships in our Navy for striking targets on the land from the air, which is the main thing our military forces have been used for lately and will be for the foreseeable future, and they're also very important against foreign naval threats (although you could say they're second to the missile/gun ships there). There are some ships we could cut from the Navy without reducing our abilities much, but these aren't the ones.

Increasing the number of special operations forces is key to the plan

This just makes me wonder what they mean. There's no s[ecific entity described by the phrase "special operations forces", and the category includes units that are rather different from each other, so there's no telling what's being increased here. This quote was followed by one about the special forces returning to their traditional role as instructors to foreign armed forces, but that ISN'T their traditional role, so that whole thing makes no sense and has to be discarded as uninformative.

After a decade of being an integral part of America’s wars, the reserve components will not go back to being a strategic Cold War-era reserve. The reserves will be the nation’s hedge against the unexpected, the secretary said.

How is that different from before?

base realignments and closures... The budget will eliminate two forward-based Army heavy brigades in Europe.

Nifty. There wasn't much of a point left for those anymore and I've been wondering why we had them for a while anyway.

...will base littoral combat ships in Singapore and Bahrain.

So they still aren't getting rid of the silly LCS. Oh well. That could have saved us some money without making any real difference in overall power/effectiveness. But at least they didn't mention getting even MORE of them.

The United States and European allies also will look to share costs for new capabilities

How does that work and how is it different from before? We already buy each other's equipment, which contributes to each other's research & development costs anyway. Currently, the USA does a disproportionate amount of the developing and the investing; does this new plan involve making it more even, and if so, how? I doubt we can get other countries to start doing more than they have been, so this sounds like reducing the USA's level to be more even with others. (And this is an item that Obama will reject anyway, if he sticks to his word of a couple of years ago, when he said he would end all development of any new weapon systems.)

The budget sinks more money into technologies to prevail in an anti-access, aerial-denial scenario...

Like the one about the special forces, this bit is just too vague.

...will fund the next-generation bomber...

This is a mistake, but it's one that I'm sure will be corrected by Congress before it goes too far. Every new armed airplane gets more expensive and dragged through longer delays than the one before, to which the politicians can be counted on to respond by making it worse or just cancelling the thing completely, because high-tech weapon-planes make big fat targets for politicians. And the cost is also worse for bombers than for any other type anyway, so that alone would make the costs higher and the calls to kill it louder and more persistent and widespread than the already have been for F-22 and F-35, even if the trend generally weren't for it to get worse with each new plane over time anyway. With budgets only getting tighter for years to come, unless the process that's allowed it to get this way is severely reorganized, a new bomber simply has no chance. Even if projected schedules & costs don't cause them to kill it before any are built at all, the first few planes to be built will spend decades in Testing Hell sucking up trillions of dollars, and then the program will be killed for that.

And on top of that, not only do I predict it will happen, but I say it's what should happen. Maybe all that trouble with developing new planes can be worth it if the plane is revolutionary enough, with a big enough difference from its predecessors, like F-22/F-35, but the requirements and proposals for the next new bomber aren't much different from B-2 anyway, and the politicians are bound to notice that as well. The solution, when the time comes to build new bombers, is going to be to build a new upgraded version of B-2, thus bypassing a lot of the process that's involved in a totally new plane. We can give them the newest sensors and skin and optional remote/auto-pilot and such without needing a totally new plane to put them on/in. I think Panetta is succumbing to cool-new-gadget syndrome on this one.

The F-35... “we have slowed procurement to complete more testing and allow for developmental changes before buying in significant quantities,”

Big dumb mistake, but probably one that won't be fixed like the above. Delaying and reducing funding for a high-tech airplane only makes the delays and costs worse. If you think the problem is that there's too much testing & development still left to be done, the way to fix that is to make more of them to use for more of that work to be done with them. And with this particular program, screwing around with it like this not only has a negative effect on the effectiveness of our own forces, but also does the same to our foreign allies who are waiting for these things! That makes US a more unreliable ally to them. And on top of that, taking a bite out of the F-35 program is contradictory to one of the other decisions in this budget proposal: maintaining the aircraft carrier fleet (which means making them proportionally more of our overall navy as other parts get cut) while delaying the arrival of the planes the carriers need to carry.

* * *

Overall, although articles about Obama's announcement that were written before this budget came out said this budget is based on a shift in strategy, particularly with an emphasis on China, I don't see it. I just see general cutting, uneven but not in a way that shows that kind of pattern. For example, if China gets aggressive, it's more likely to do so on land than on the water, but the budget calls for a reduction in just about everything of ours on the ground (except special forces, which can't handle large-scale stuff on their own). It does seem to hold current levels for aircraft that are currently in service to support ground forces from the air, but against an army as huge as China's, we'd need to be increasing that, not just holding it steady. And this budget, as I mentiond above, is actually delaying (and can thus be expected to eventually reduce) our next planned big improvement in air-to-ground ability, the F-35. So we're looking at maintaining the ability to hold a hard line against China at sea, but going even farther than we already were down the path of simply leaving Asia alone to deal with China themselves on the land. In a military sense, it makes sense, because China's strength is on land not at sea, but it's a very mixed message in the political/diplomatic sense.

The only pattern I do see in these budget changes, strategy-wise, is more of the same general progression that we've seen since at least the early 1990s: it designs our military forces for relatively small (compared to China) actions done largely by aircraft and cruise missiles, with as little involvement of our troops on the ground as possible. Despite what Obama announced before Panetta's budget was released, there's no new strategy there, just a continuation of established trends.

 

[Travis]

In my opinion we don't need more super tech bombers. We need more bomb trucks.

 

[Doubt]

maintaining the number of big-deck carriers

I thought these might get cut, and they shouldn't, so this is not a bad start. They're the most important ships in our Navy for striking targets on the land from the air, which is the main thing our military forces have been used for lately and will be for the foreseeable future, and they're also very important against foreign naval threats (although you could say they're second to the missile/gun ships there). There are some ships we could cut from the Navy without reducing our abilities much, but these aren't the ones.

I think we could do with fewer carriers. At the end of the cold war era, we had 15 of them. After the cold war they scaled back to 12. Now we are at 11. I think 9 would be better. Way to many resources get devoted to carriers because we cannot afford a loss. Add in huge logistics requirements and the need for ground based tankers and you have to wonder if they are what battleships were at the start of WWII. Big and out of date for a lot of the missions they are attached to.

Then we use carriers even when they are not needed. Best example of wasted resources there that I can think of was when the Navy some how had to use carriers to support actions in Serbia while the air force operated out of Italy.

Increasing the number of special operations forces is key to the plan

This just makes me wonder what they mean. There's no specific entity described by the phrase "special operations forces", and the category includes units that are rather different from each other, so there's no telling what's being increased here. This quote was followed by one about the special forces returning to their traditional role as instructors to foreign armed forces, but that ISN'T their traditional role, so that whole thing makes no sense and has to be discarded as uninformative.

For the Special ops stuff I suspect the whole command will get bigger. I don't have a problem with that as long as the standards don't suffer to get the number of bodies up. In the case of the Green Berets, training foreign military units is very much part of their job in peace time. It serves as part of their own training for what they are supposed to do in war time.

After a decade of being an integral part of America’s wars, the reserve components will not go back to being a strategic Cold War-era reserve. The reserves will be the nation’s hedge against the unexpected, the secretary said.

How is that different from before?

Good question. Other than a lot of people seemed to think that the national guard only existed to protect the US homeland. Those people were wrong and I think the section you quoted is likely to make those people think they were right in the first place.

base realignments and closures... The budget will eliminate two forward-based Army heavy brigades in Europe.

Nifty. There wasn't much of a point left for those anymore and I've been wondering why we had them for a while anyway.

Well, at the end of the cold war, there were 16 brigades/regiments of armor, mechanized infantry and cavalry in Germany. Last I knew there were still 4 brigades there. Looks like they will cut down to 2. The 4 brigades made sense when Europe was still a bit unstable. Now I think they need to start looking at how much armor and mech infantry units make sense given how hard they are to relocate.

...will base littoral combat ships in Singapore and Bahrain.

So they still aren't getting rid of the silly LCS. Oh well. That could have saved us some money without making any real difference in overall power/effectiveness. But at least they didn't mention getting even MORE of them.

I had not read anything on the LCS in a long time. Last I knew the ship they were designing has some big issues. I favor the idea behind it but what is the status of the development program? Maybe they could copy something like what the Israeli navy uses?

The United States and European allies also will look to share costs for new capabilities

How does that work and how is it different from before? We already buy each other's equipment, which contributes to each other's research & development costs anyway. Currently, the USA does a disproportionate amount of the developing and the investing; does this new plan involve making it more even, and if so, how? I doubt we can get other countries to start doing more than they have been, so this sounds like reducing the USA's level to be more even with others. (And this is an item that Obama will reject anyway, if he sticks to his word of a couple of years ago, when he said he would end all development of any new weapon systems.)

More joint development projects? That can be a problem given how a lot of them turned out, or failed to turn out at all in the past. Worst example I can think of was the joint US/UK/German tank project from the '70s that resulted in almost nothing at all called "MBT70".

The budget sinks more money into technologies to prevail in an anti-access, aerial-denial scenario...

Like the one about the special forces, this bit is just too vague.

Agreed. The only thing you can be sure of is they are talking about R&D money.

...will fund the next-generation bomber...

I home they are talking about a B-52 replacement. Something based on a jet airliner geared to either dumping lots of smart munitions or cruise missiles rather than something overly high tech.

As for the F-35, yes, anything that slows down procurement or lowers the number will just increase the per unit cost. But the plane has issues and they might be better off slowing things down until they solve them. Otherwise the cost of solving those problems later will go up instead.

 

[theprestige]

This just makes me wonder what they mean. There's no s[ecific entity described by the phrase "special operations forces", and the category includes units that are rather different from each other, so there's no telling what's being increased here. This quote was followed by one about the special forces returning to their traditional role as instructors to foreign armed forces, but that ISN'T their traditional role, so that whole thing makes no sense and has to be discarded as uninformative.

Having served in a unit falling under the umbrella of the US Special Operations Command, I found that bit to be pretty informative, actually.

See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Special_Operations_Command

It reads to me that while this budget reduces the overall capacity for major warfare, it increases the capacity for smaller missions that require adept combinations of specific disciplines drawn from different branches. I.e., stuff within the portfolio of USSOCOM.

The reference to "special operators" in the context of the article you linked seems to mean the Green Berets, which were in fact originally conceived in the role of instructors to foreign armed forces.

 

[Delvo]

Best example of wasted resources there that I can think of was when the Navy some how had to use carriers to support actions in Serbia while the air force operated out of Italy.

Are you saying it would have been better to run the equivalent number of flights from land bases instead? And what caused the "need" for the Navy to do it if the Air Force was already flying in the area?

I had not read anything on the LCS in a long time. Last I knew the ship they were designing has some big issues. I favor the idea behind it but what is the status of the development program? Maybe they could copy something like what the Israeli navy uses?

They've gone from development to production. So far, two are in service and seven are in different stages of being built. The total plan for now is for twenty. Israel considered getting some for a while but then decided to get conventional frigates or heavy corvettes instead.

I hope they are talking about a B-52 replacement. Something based on a jet airliner geared to either dumping lots of smart munitions or cruise missiles rather than something overly high tech.

The "next generation" part of the program's name is there because the idea is to use next-generation technology. The requirements issued by the Air Force include the ability to survive in heavily defended areas, which rules out the type of plane you're talking about; the best way to do that would have called for extreme speed, until stealth technology came along, but that kind of plane has neither of those abilities.

The Air Force might have specified a target number for the NGB's radar signature, but even if they didn't, the companies that would compete to build the thing know they need to make it as stealthy as they can, which is why the designs they've proposed so far are shaped so much like B-2, which was already the ideal shape for a large plane to be as stealthy as it can be. Improvement would depend on giving it a new skin material for more radar energy absorption and less maintenance/repair trouble. Such skins are already available and in production and use on F-22 and F-35.

Other Air Force requirements for the NGB include an option for unmanned flight for at least some missions, sensors & sensor data processing that can pick out & identify objects and make/update its own maps on the fly and tell guided weapons where to go, and networking with friendly forces. This can all be done with technology from other projects such as drones and F-22 and F-35.

Having served in a unit falling under the umbrella of the US Special Operations Command...

Which?

It reads to me that while this budget reduces the overall capacity for major warfare, it increases the capacity for smaller missions that require adept combinations of specific disciplines drawn from different branches. I.e., stuff within the portfolio of USSOCOM.

The reference to "special operators" in the context of the article you linked seems to mean the Green Berets, which were in fact originally conceived in the role of instructors to foreign armed forces.

So do you figure the budget is calling for an increase in only the Green Berets, or all special forces, or the Green Berets plus some but not all of the others?

 

[Doubt]

Are you saying it would have been better to run the equivalent number of flights from land bases instead? And what caused the "need" for the Navy to do it if the Air Force was already flying in the area?

Yes, if they really needed a navy contribution they could have operated from the same airbase as the Air force and parked the carriers. The "need" only existed in terms of inter-service military politics. The carriers must be used or their usefulness will get questioned.

 

[theprestige]

Which?

7th PSYOP Group

So do you figure the budget is calling for an increase in only the Green Berets, or all special forces, or the Green Berets plus some but not all of the others?

I think in practice it will come down to, "some but not all," simply because I expect that each service's Special Operations Command will have more special ops products in their catalog than they will receive funding for. So they will have to pick winners and losers, and some stuff may lose funding, or even be cut altogether. But I think this will happen in the context of increasing funding overall for the entire USSOCOM portfolio, including the Green Berets.

And actually, I wouldn't be suprised if the Green Berets end up getting a funding cut. "Return to a more traditional role," sounds to me suspiciously like, "we won't be spending money on their expanded mission anymore."

I mean, USSOCOM already has at least two elite counter-terrorist and hostage-rescue units, Delta Force and DEVGRU, not to mention Pararescue. And they have a wide selection of direct action and reconnaissance units to choose from, including Army Rangers and Marine scouts. Etc.

So, in an era of belt-tightening, it will probably seem sensible to military planners to spend their increased funds to bolster each special ops unit's core mission, and rely more on combinations of units when a more diverse skill set is needed, rather than trying to fund "jack of all trades" units. This approach would also be consistent with the nature of USSOCOM, which was establish precisely to provide this kind of combination and coordination of special operations forces.












ETA: Why do I get the feeling you are trying to read quite a lot into the specific wording of this second-hand press account?

 

[Darth Rotor]

I think we could do with fewer carriers.

No, not in the least bit true.

You can't reconstitute carriers and the infrastructure needed to make and overhaul them as quickly as you can infantry and mech divisions.

Given America's LOCATION on the globe, floating airfields are a strategic necessity. Part of the reason for that is the vagaries of politics. Now and again our deals for airfields ASHORE go belly up. See folks like Turkey choosing to not agree to base certain ops from airfields in their turf.

See the various Stans, and places like Manas and Karshie Kanabad. See also a few of the landing rights in various Gulf states as regimes fall in and out of interest in Americans being around, as modest examples.

FFS, the Brits attached strings aplenty to the missions we flew out of Diego Garcia, and we have a special relationship with them!

This isn't my Maritime bias speaking, this is being imbued in a couple of decades of Joint Doctrine and strategic planning because I had to. And then, on the operational side, having to get things done and finding out how ofter WHERE an ASHORE airfield was located, and by whom the turf was owned, what could or could not be done due to political issues.

In twenty years, revisit carriers, as the last generation of manned fighters will be hitting the last third of their useful life: F-35.

Until then, they are a strategic requirement for America based upon
a) geography,
b) and the habit of our politicians to get involved all over the globe. <= You won't be stopping that anytime soon, given that it is a habit of both parties for three solid generations.

Given that requirement, and the readiness cycle, 11 or 12 is the number you need to have.

 

[Doubt]

No, not in the least bit true.

You can't reconstitute carriers and the infrastructure needed to make and overhaul them as quickly as you can infantry and mech divisions.

Given America's LOCATION on the globe, floating airfields are a strategic necessity. Part of the reason for that is the vagaries of politics. Now and again our deals for airfields ASHORE go belly up. See folks like Turkey choosing to not agree to base certain ops from airfields in their turf.

See the various Stans, and places like Manas and Karshie Kanabad. See also a few of the landing rights in various Gulf states as regimes fall in and out of interest in Americans being around, as modest examples.

FFS, the Brits attached strings aplenty to the missions we flew out of Diego Garcia, and we have a special relationship with them!

This isn't my Maritime bias speaking, this is being imbued in a couple of decades of Joint Doctrine and strategic planning because I had to. And then, on the operational side, having to get things done and finding out how ofter WHERE an ASHORE airfield was located, and by whom the turf was owned, what could or could not be done due to political issues.

In twenty years, revisit carriers, as the last generation of manned fighters will be hitting the last third of their useful life: F-35.

Until then, they are a strategic requirement for America based upon
a) geography,
b) and the habit of our politicians to get involved all over the globe. <= You won't be stopping that anytime soon, given that it is a habit of both parties for three solid generations.

Given that requirement, and the readiness cycle, 11 or 12 is the number you need to have.

The carriers cannot do more than 2 days of operations without a local base. The run out of fuel and weapons very fast. That means support ships have to keep getting to them. And as soon as the support ships get there your carrier is done flying anything other than helicopters for about 12 hours. And those support ships have to come from some place. Which means you have to secure the route they take in from the US or they have to come in from one of those local ports with all those rules.

Then you need air force tankers if you want to deliver anything more than a pin prick in terms of offensive capacity. To get off the deck of a carrier with any even remotely looking like a good ordnance load the planes have to leave the deck of the carrier with their fuel tanks half empty and pick up the full load from the air force. The Carriers own little tankers are not sufficient to support offensive operations of more than a hand full of planes.

Next you have the offensive potential of a carrier planes to look at. It really is not that much compared to land based air power. An F-18 can carry 4 harpoon missiles. Well, it can get off the deck of a carrier with 4 of them, then meet an air force tanker and then if can fly a short distance and launch them. Where did that tanker come from? It came from some base that could just as easily launch B-52s carrying 12 or more harpoon missiles for distances much farther away than the fully fueled F-18s. (It sometimes seems that the air force and navy both like to forget that the harpoon was a joint project between them.)

Then there is all those assets used to protect carriers. Last I knew, one E2C Hawkeye cost as much as a frigate. Each carrier needed 4 of them. That is just the early warning system for the carriers. That does not even get into all the resources needed to handle actual weapons to defend a carrier air and sub threats.

The bottom line is that carriers, without local bases, get you about 2 days of limited offensive ability at a very high price. If you want anything sustained they you are right back to needing local support and all the foreign relations problems that go with them.

Now that does not mean we don't need any carriers. But we don't need to protect the status quo for the Navy any more than we do for any other service.

Now back when the cold war ended, they justification for keeping 12 carriers was that you needed one in each of 4 major oceans. That required 3 for each since in addition to keeping one one station they needed one training up to replace it and one undergoing refit and repairs. Those 4 oceans are the Atlantic, Pacific, Indian ocean and the Med.

One of the reasons that reasoning comes off as not being very useful is that when something does happen the navy does not want to commit single carriers to action. They usually wait until a second one can reach the area so they can support each other when they have to resupply. So keeping one carrier on station all the time but not being willing to use it makes the continuous deployment argument look a bit hollow.

Where is the threat in the Atlantic that we need a carrier to respond to? Venezuela? Cuba? We need a carrier for those places?

 

[Delvo]

The carriers cannot do more than 2 days of operations without a local base.

I want to see the source for that. How long would you say that means they can run routine peace-time operations flying nothing but patrols and drills?

And as soon as the support ships get there your carrier is done flying anything other than helicopters for about 12 hours.

Why?

* * *

An interesting detail about the budget proposal has been revealed since I started this thread: DoD Fast-Tracks New Bomber (The article refers to a "Long-Range Strike Bomber", which you can think of as another name for the "Next Generation Bomber" after the project was once shut down and then revived.)

When I first saw that the new budget continues funding the "Next Generation Bomber", this was what I thought:

This is a mistake, but it's one that I'm sure will be corrected by Congress before it goes too far... Even if projected schedules & costs don't cause them to kill it before any are built at all, the first few planes to be built will spend decades in Testing Hell sucking up trillions of dollars, and then the program will be killed for that... The solution, when the time comes to build new bombers, is going to be to build a new upgraded version of B-2, thus bypassing a lot of the process that's involved in a totally new plane. We can give them the newest sensors and skin and optional remote/auto-pilot and such without needing a totally new plane to put them on/in.

With this latest news, I think they agree with me and this is exactly what they're planning on. Three things (other than what I've already noted, like the similarity of proposed new designs to B-2 and the fact that that's dictated by the laws of physics) make me say that:

1. The schedule: 8 years in the present environment to get a whole new plane designed, tested, selected in competition, tested some more, tweaked based on test results, and mass-produced, then have the pilots trained and the whole support system for it set up, is laughably ridiculous, unless some of that process has already been done ahead of time.

2. The projected per-unit production price is very familiar; it's about what production alone, isolated from research & testing & development, ended up costing per B-2 (just slightly higher). Modern technology might be expected to make it more expensive than the originals, but borrowing that from other programs such as drones and F-35 cuts down on that, and, since the new bomber's payload requirement is a bit lighter anyway, they can also cuts costs by reducing the size slightly.

3. The research money they've set aside is even more bizarrely low, for a brand-new plane, than the amount of time they've given it. It's less than a fifth of the cost of the original B-2 research. The only way that could possibly work is if they already know that there's not much research to do, just as if all they're planning on researching is how to modify and combine what they've already got instead of how to make a whole new plane.

 

[R.Mackey]

MMkay, so I've worked some of these programs over the years, and either proposed to or been around those who worked most of the others. But I was never in the military, so my perspective is likely to be skewed.

Also Leon Panetta was once my Congressman, before CA 16th got redrawn, and before I went to grad school. Never thought he'd wind up as SecDef, but there we are.

I thought [aircraft carriers] might get cut, and they shouldn't, so this is not a bad start. They're the most important ships in our Navy for striking targets on the land from the air, which is the main thing our military forces have been used for lately and will be for the foreseeable future, and they're also very important against foreign naval threats (although you could say they're second to the missile/gun ships there). There are some ships we could cut from the Navy without reducing our abilities much, but these aren't the ones.

Agree, mostly. Eleven carriers is a whole lot of them to be sure... however it takes that many to have four on station 24/7, that's 1 in each ocean apart from the Southern Ocean, and 1 in the Persian Gulf. Seeing as how one increasingly important mission is being able to create no-fly zones anywhere you can imagine, they're pretty relevant to our strategic needs. We might get by with 10, but then again we might have to early-retire Nimitz. Not a lot of precedence for mothballing nuclear carriers. We'll learn a lot in the next few years.

On the other hand, each carrier requires a ton of support. We're making progress in downsizing escort ships without losing too much effectiveness, but there's only so far you can go. We're also still woefully short of some support ships, mostly minesweepers and things, and we will be until USVs fill the role. (LCS will be no help at all.) That's a decade off at least. So the decision to keep the carriers is sensible, but really expensive if done right. Done wrong it exposes irreplacable assets to asymmetric attack.

There's no specific entity described by the phrase "special operations forces", and the category includes units that are rather different from each other, so there's no telling what's being increased here. This quote was followed by one about the special forces returning to their traditional role as instructors to foreign armed forces, but that ISN'T their traditional role, so that whole thing makes no sense and has to be discarded as uninformative.

Well, actually it is their traditional role, provided you consider the freedom-fighter-of-the-week as a "foreign armed force." SOF is all about leverage.

They also have an unusually large logistics footprint for their numbers. I'm guessing this means a heck of a lot more specialized helicopters, rubber boats, modified submarines, and so on. Could also reflect pre-positioning of same. I'm out of my field on this one.

[Reserves] How is that different from before?

Actually a pretty big deal money-wise. It suggests the reserves are going to be reformed into strictly defensive and garrison forces. I'm undecided if dumbing down the Reserves is efficient partitioning of responsibilities, or wastefully maintaining a second-tier force with overly limited capabilities. Either way, this is probably inevitable given the damage done to the Reserves in Iraq.

Nifty. There wasn't much of a point left for those anymore and I've been wondering why we had them for a while anyway.

Money. Helps convince former Warsaw Pact countries to align with the West. Might need them someday if Comrade Putin gets frisky with Georgia again, but I think that's a long shot and something we'll do our best to avoid anyhow.

So they still aren't getting rid of the silly LCS. Oh well. That could have saved us some money without making any real difference in overall power/effectiveness. But at least they didn't mention getting even MORE of them.

I have never met anyone with anything good to say about the LCS. This program baffles me. Yes, I know the argument on paper.

How does that work and how is it different from before? We already buy each other's equipment, which contributes to each other's research & development costs anyway. Currently, the USA does a disproportionate amount of the developing and the investing; does this new plan involve making it more even, and if so, how?

Actually other nations develop or contribute to a lot of things that we won't use, thanks to simple NIH. A few that come to mind are the KC-X fiasco, the Super Tucanos that we'll buy for Afghanistan but not to use ourselves, and any number of IFV designs that we boldly ignore. The Europeans have made pretty good strides in RADAR and guided missiles that we should seriously consider, but probably won't.

I think this is just boilerplate, but it would be a good thing for us to do.

[Anti-access, aerial-denial]
Like the one about the special forces, this bit is just too vague.

I think this about converting strategic assets to conventional roles... specifically building up SSGNs and reopening the "conventional" ICBM idea. Not sure.

[Next-Generation Bomber]This is a mistake, but it's one that I'm sure will be corrected by Congress before it goes too far.

Don't worry. It won't happen. I've seen several waves of calls for Next-Gen Bomber, going back to the mid-90's. They never go anywhere. The money isn't there, and we're already committed to flying B-52's for another thirty years.

[F-35 delays] Big dumb mistake, but probably one that won't be fixed like the above. Delaying and reducing funding for a high-tech airplane only makes the delays and costs worse. If you think the problem is that there's too much testing & development still left to be done, the way to fix that is to make more of them to use for more of that work to be done with them.

I disagree. I worked JSF in the proposal phase and keep up with some of its current management. The bird has some real development problems. All of these problems were forseen years ago, and they're not solved. If you forge ahead with a big buy now, you're only going to pay double in terms of capability upgrades and life extension programs and crazy weight-saving campaigns.

Since we can't back out of F-35 thanks to international treaties, it's probably better to build a small "deployable" development wing and kick full production down the road. Sadly this is what was needed for F-111 back in the day, and more recently V-22. Which makes sense, until you recall that the entire reason for JSF's existence was to be survivable at lower cost. But a big buy now will waste incredible amounts of money for marginal capability, in my opinion.

Overall, although articles about Obama's announcement that were written before this budget came out said this budget is based on a shift in strategy, particularly with an emphasis on China, I don't see it.

I don't either. However, this proposal is attacking at least one very big sacred cow (JSF), so perhaps that's all they felt they were willing to challenge in an election year.

It's consistent performance for Obama. He's very much a moderate, not the hyper-radical lefty that some of us dreamed of, and others feared.

All opinions mine alone, of course.

 

[Doubt]

I want to see the source for that. How long would you say that means they can run routine peace-time operations flying nothing but patrols and drills?

Unfortunately for me, my primary source for that was a TV documentary that I cannot recall the title. After a bit of searching I found the following:

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...TlC8dJlhxsfVjakpA&sig2=iHNYSLaw72PllObTMbAGOw

From the end of page 40:

A comparison between the USS Roosevelt
and the USS Kennedy (the newest conventional
carrier) replenishment during the Gulf War
shows the USS Roosevelt conducted 63
replenishments in 183 days and the USS
Kennedy conducted 78 replenishments in 226
days. On average, both carriers replenished once every 2.9 days during their deployments.

So lets make that 2.9 days instead. Although that would likely get shorter if they had to conduct anti-sub patrols and other additional air operations if they were facing an actual naval threat instead of just conducting operations against land based targets. And that is a general number for resupply events and does not indicate where the supply ships are coming from. Just the need for a resupply. But there are not many of those ships. The navy sea lift command does have it's own webpage showing most of those ships. They are operated by mostly civilian crews and tend to operate in specific areas where they are depending on local bases:

http://www.msc.navy.mil/PM1/

For the peace time patrols and drills, there would be a lot of variation there and I don't have a good source for even speculating on that.

Why?

Replenishment underway requires the ships being supplied to sail in a straight line parallel to the supply ship to maintain cable tension for transferring supplies and fuel. This precludes the carrier from turning to stay facing into the wind which is what they do during fixed wing aircraft operations.

 

[Darth Rotor]

The carriers cannot do more than 2 days of operations without a local base.

Methinks you are full of it.

In fact, I know it, given that your number is wrong, and you have not premised the make up of your task group before your shoot off your mouth.

Then you need air force tankers if you want to deliver anything more than a pin prick in terms of offensive capacity.

You have not yet put the mission out, and now you make this crap up as a general assumption.

I smell a powder blue turd floating here.
=

To get off the deck of a carrier with any even remotely looking like a good ordnance load the planes have to leave the deck of the carrier with their fuel tanks half empty and pick up the full load from the air force.

Nope. Once again, you don't even have a mission figured out and you are telling me what you can't do. Amazing.

Tell me, how many strike packages have you actually worked with in real life? I believe the answer is zero, and will be surprised if it isn't. I had to learn a thing or two about how this all works when people's lives were at stake. (Don't get me wrong, if the Air Force shows up with big beautiful KC-10's, the world is a better place, no fooling.)

I've seen it both ways, with all players (and lotsa Powder Blue gas) and without the Per Diem kings playing.

 

[Doubt]

Methinks you are full of it.

Me thinks I am not. Read the post directly above this one and cite refuting evidence.

If I am wrong, we will all learn something.

 

[Darth Rotor]

Me thinks I am not. Read the post directly above this one and cite refuting evidence.

If I am wrong, we will all learn something.

Unfortunately for me, my primary source for that was a TV documentary

I believe we are all done here.

You really don't know what you are talking about. You say two days, then you cite a documentary on what mission, in what war, that gives you three days?

Keep on pretending you know something.

A comparison between the USS Roosevelt and the USS Kennedy (the newest conventional
carrier) replenishment during the Gulf War shows the USS Roosevelt conducted 63
replenishments in 183 days and the USS Kennedy conducted 78 replenishments in 226
days. On average, both carriers replenished once every 2.9 days during their deployments.

Cheers. IIRC, Kennedy has been retired for a while, like almost five years. A friend of mine was air boss on Kennedy in the early 2000's. IIRC, Kennedy was providing us sorties in 2004 from the PG. Relieved by USS George Washington. (Rusty memory).

Replenishment underway requires the ships being supplied to sail in a straight line parallel to the supply ship to maintain cable tension for transferring supplies and fuel. This precludes the carrier from turning to stay facing into the wind which is what they do during fixed wing aircraft operations.

No, it doesn't. You can make the UNREP course the same as Fox Corpen.

Usually, however, you don't do UNREP and flight ops at the same time.
But the fact of replenishing does not take the carrier off the line. Some replenishments are longer than others. Depends on what the carrier, or other ship, needs. It's still in the MOD LOC, it's where the mission is. You seem to be citing the Gulf War. You need to understand something: replenishment does not mean "we are totally empty, fill me up" it more often means "top me off" from X% down from full load.

At sea, I've seen significant variation. You also establish a deck cycle for launches and recoveries. Depending on where you are, you may have to make a lot of maneuvering to set up for launch and recovery, depending on weather and how large or small the area is, and how close to land, you are operating.

You have no idea what you are talking about, and thus found your argument for "fewer" carriers on a partial understanding of why we have them.

What happened in the Gulf War is certainly representative of some operations, but it isn't the template for all operations.

Remember: you can't move an airfield once you've built it. Nice thing about air fields, if it is big enough, is you can fly any and everything off of it. And if you have massive fuel infrastructure, you can to this for days and weeks. One of the downsides is (and I've had this happen IRL) that you can get a mission cancelled that you were counting on when all of a sudden a political whim prohibits any armed mission from taking off and dropping bombs in location X that originated in location Y. Three B-1's, full of bombs, and a mission, and they couldn't drop a single one. Mission basically scrapped. That political limitation doesn't come into play when you launch from the high seas.

The strategic advantage to a carrier (and its escorts, it doesn't operate alone) is you can send it somewhere for a few days, weeks, months, and then leave. No footprint. That's flexible. Politicians like flexible. You get to have an airfield somewhere, (though it can't bring in a 747), to do something for a while, and then off you go, somewhere else.

Reducing the number of carriers is, if you bother to look at a map of the globe, and where America is, a foolish policy, unless our politicians choose to simply stop being getting involved anywhere and everywhere when they get a wild hair up their arses. I don't see that happening any time soon.

Something like 80 percent of the world's population lives within a few hundred miles of the coast (I think the number cited used to be within 200, but I'd have to go and dig that out of an old notebook).

Good day.

 

[Doubt]

I believe we are all done here.

You really don't know what you are talking about. You say two days, then you cite a documentary on what mission, in what war, that gives you three days?

Keep on pretending you know something.



Cheers.

Please refute the number of 2.9 days between replenishment. Use facts. Taking a dismissive tone based on your expertise is not a substitute for evidence. It ends up looking like evasion. I am no expert buy I can look up data. Do the same.

No, it doesn't.
You can make the UNREP course the same as Fox Corpen.

Usually, however, you don't do UNREP and flight ops at the same time. But the fact of replenishing does not take the carrier off the line. Some replenishments are longer than others. Depends on what the carrier, or other ship, needs. It's still in the MOD LOC, it's where the mission is. You seem to be citing the Gulf War. You need to understand something: replenishment does not mean "we are totally empty, fill me up" it more often means "top me off" from X% down from full load.

Okay. Show me. Give me a reference. One picture of flight operations, other than helicopters, while being resupplied would be perfect. But I will settle for some sort of written evidence of it actually being done. Being able to state how frequently it happens would be good too.

 

[Darth Rotor]

Please refute the number of 2.9 days between replenishment. Use facts.

I am not playing this silly game with you, Doubt, as I have no need to. Fact is, that how often you need to replenish is driven by your mission, your sortie rate, how low your stocks are allowed to go by guidance from higher, and so on. It depends. But that number is utterly meaningless to the argument you are trying to make. The problem of the limits of carrier operations is NOT how often you top off or replace your bullets and gas. It is crew fatigue when you are in cyclic ops, and I have no interest in sharing what I know about that with you, nor anyone else. If you aren't in cyclic ops, you could operate for weeks without wearing out your air wing or your ships company.

You are trying to use the Gulf War (1991) to defend how many carriers to keep to meet global needs. for the next fifteen years. That's a fool's game.

Since you dont know how to use them, and most people don't, you fall for rhetoric that is aimed at the uninformed.

Okay. Show me. Give me a reference. One picture of flight operations, other than helicopters, while being resupplied would be perfect. But I will settle for some sort of written evidence of it actually being done. Being able to state how frequently it happens would be good too.

Not everything happens in a book, Doubt.
Some of it happens in real life.
I've seen it done once.
I know that in peace time it's rare, and if I were the CO of the carrier, I'd rather not if I didn't have to.
For peacetime, the risks don't typically outweigh the benefit.
So you do your launch, or your recovery, and bring the supply ship along side. Get what you need, then you break away and go back to what you were doing.

You adapt during real operations if you have to, but if you do that, it increases some risks. Which risks you take when is driven by your mission.

Cheers.

 

[Doubt]

I am not playing this silly game with you, Doubt, as I have no need to. Fact is, that how often you need to replenish is driven by your mission, your sortie rate, how low your stocks are allowed to go by guidance from higher, and so on. It depends. But that number is utterly meaningless to the argument you are trying to make. The problem of the limits of carrier operations is NOT how often you top off or replace your bullets and gas. It is crew fatigue when you are in cyclic ops, and I have no interest in sharing what I know about that with you, nor anyone else. If you aren't in cyclic ops, you could operate for weeks without wearing out your air wing or your ships company.

I cite a number. You cite nothing. Who, among skeptics should believe you at this point?

Darth, I have served. Army. I have been paying attention to military operations since the mid 70s when I was a teenager. I listen to what is said when the various services try to justify new hardware. And I remember how much of it turns out to be BS. I won't believe you if you cannot site facts. I have no reason to take you at your word if you won't put something up to back them up.

You are trying to use the Gulf War (1991) to defend how many carriers to keep to meet global needs. for the next fifteen years. That's a fool's game.

Actually that is not what I am doing. I am pointing out the limitations of what a carrier is to show that they are not what the navy would have us believe they are. I did, however in an earlier post state that I think the navy could get by with less than the navy wants. But that had nothing to do with the Gulf War.

Since you dont know how to use them, and most people don't, you fall for rhetoric that is aimed at the uninformed.

You are only saying that since I won't buy the navy rhetoric that you have paraphrased about why we need so many carriers.