Navy
Ready for Briefing on Small Surface Combatant, SecDef Not
“Everything’s ready to go,” one source said of
the Navy’s presentation.
But the SecDef never appeared. According to
several Pentagon sources, he was delayed by a prior engagement, and the
briefing is waiting to be re-scheduled — no easy task, given the hectic
schedules of many of the principles.
The results of an SSC Task Force charged with
coming up with a more heavily-armed warship to succeed the Littoral Combat Ship
(LCS) have been one of the more eagerly-awaited secrets in naval circles this
year. Those in the know have been exceptionally tight-lipped, and those outside
the loop hope that with the Hagel briefing completed — and the recommendations
approved — the Navy will be forthcoming about where its small surface warship
programs are headed.
Decisions on the SSC need to be made soon — in
time, Hagel has directed, “to inform” the 2016 budget, due to be sent to
Congress in February.
Meanwhile, a decision on another shipbuilding
program could also be close to finalization. The Navy and Marine Corps have
promised to decide whether the next amphibious ship design, dubbed LX(R), will
be based on existing LPD 17 San Antonio-class ships or developed from other
designs. The Navy isn’t planning to award a contract for the ships until 2020,
but industry needs to know soon to begin work on competitive designs.
Pentagon sources said Gen. James Amos, Marine
Corps commandant, in a recent letter to Mabus, is recommending the new ship be
based on the LPD 17 hull form.
To keep the production line hot and costs
down, Amos also reportedly recommends buying LPD 28, the yet-to-be-named 12th
ship in the San Antonio class, a ship the Navy has not requested but three of
four key congressional committees support buying. Congress so far has provided
partial funding, but the Navy is declining to order the ship until full funding
is available.
Plans call for the Navy to buy 11 LX(R)s, each
costing about a third of the price of an LPD 17.
This summer, Sean Stackley, the Navy’s top
acquisition official, told Congress the service had completed an LX(R) analysis
of alternatives study.
“Affordability will be a key focus for this
ship class,” Stackley told the House Seapower subcommittee on July 25.
“Industry will be involved in identifying cost drivers and proposing cost
reduction initiatives to drive affordability into the design, production,
operation, and maintenance of this ship class.”
The choices for the LXR) design, he said, were
for a modified LPD 17 derivative, a foreign design, or an entirely new, clean
sheet design.
Huntington Ingalls Shipbuilding, builders of
San Antonio class, has developed variants of the LPD 17 that it calls Flight
II. Those designs strip off significant portions of the LPD 17’s
superstructure, replacing many features of the ship with lower-cost
alternatives, but keeping the basic hull form and machinery spaces, along with
its large flight deck.
Posters Comments:
1) This article is one
example of what happens when a country disarms.
2) Funding of the war
against ISIL is another such example.
3) Cutting military pay
and benefits is another such example.
4) Extending deployments
of remaining forces is another such example.
5) Cutting the training of
the remaining forces, and their Family’s housing maintenance, is another such
example. Less plumbers means longer toilet repair times, for example. For those
who try repair their own toilets, expect to be prosecuted in many examples.
6) Recruiting and
retention numbers for our present military will probably decline. Only time
will tell, and time usually means years to decline, and then years more to
recover if we even try to recover an all-volunteer military in sufficient
numbers. Plan B is to bring back a military draft, which we left in the early
1970’s.
7) Plan C is to begin
surrendering to smaller, and stronger in their area, regional powers.
Surrendering can be actual, or defacto. Suffering the consequences is a given.
8) America’s military is
American men and women, and their Families.
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