Posted on Sep 26, 2017
Building a 355-Ship Navy: It’s Not Just the Number, It’s the Mix
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Good article on fleet composition and increases needed CDR (Join to see) LCDR (Join to see) LCDR Rabbah Rona Matlow LT Brad McInnis CMDCM Gene Treants SCPO David Lockwood PO1 William "Chip" Nagel ENS (Join to see) PO1 John Miller PO2 Robert Aitchison
Building a 355-Ship Navy: It’s Not Just the Number, It’s the Mix
Posted from nationalinterest.org
Posted >1 y ago
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Good article that lays out the foundation of the problem, we do not have enough ships, here is where I would start closing the deficit today:
USS America class (LHA-6) modern expeditionary warfare will likely not require the LHA to have a well deck, if needed just and another LPD or LSD to the group. Going back to the idea of escort carriers we do not need a Ford class to meet all of our needs. An America LHA with 20 F-35s and specially outfitted V-22 for refueling would be able to deploy a lethal amount of airpower. Add to that a good group of escort ships like DDGs and FFGs (discussed next) with a lot of Tomohawks you have a lethal strike force that can overpower all but our near peer countries.
Accelerate the development then deployement of the Frigate variant of LCS. Declare a winner in the “sail off” and move forward with one of the hulls outfitted with VLS, new OTH Surface to Surface, RAM, etc…
Accelerate the building of the Flight III DDGs, these are capable replacements for the Tyco CGs and represent the most capable ships in the world
All three of these initiatives have little front end and development risk as they are all tried and tested platforms already deployed and walking the walk.
Manning, if you need 100 sailors to man a ship you should recruit and train 300, the extra 200 serve on shore duty supporting the fleet with training and maintenance. SIMAs could increase that amount of shipboard maintenance they cover now to include the routine maintenance that falls on the crew. Crew could spend more time training and would only need to keep the Ship clean. We have to stop pushing all of these political requirements down on the sailors that get paid next to nothing when you look at it from an hourly wage working 100 hours a week. LT Brad McInnis
USS America class (LHA-6) modern expeditionary warfare will likely not require the LHA to have a well deck, if needed just and another LPD or LSD to the group. Going back to the idea of escort carriers we do not need a Ford class to meet all of our needs. An America LHA with 20 F-35s and specially outfitted V-22 for refueling would be able to deploy a lethal amount of airpower. Add to that a good group of escort ships like DDGs and FFGs (discussed next) with a lot of Tomohawks you have a lethal strike force that can overpower all but our near peer countries.
Accelerate the development then deployement of the Frigate variant of LCS. Declare a winner in the “sail off” and move forward with one of the hulls outfitted with VLS, new OTH Surface to Surface, RAM, etc…
Accelerate the building of the Flight III DDGs, these are capable replacements for the Tyco CGs and represent the most capable ships in the world
All three of these initiatives have little front end and development risk as they are all tried and tested platforms already deployed and walking the walk.
Manning, if you need 100 sailors to man a ship you should recruit and train 300, the extra 200 serve on shore duty supporting the fleet with training and maintenance. SIMAs could increase that amount of shipboard maintenance they cover now to include the routine maintenance that falls on the crew. Crew could spend more time training and would only need to keep the Ship clean. We have to stop pushing all of these political requirements down on the sailors that get paid next to nothing when you look at it from an hourly wage working 100 hours a week. LT Brad McInnis
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CMDCM Gene Treants
Agree with all except Scrap the CS and replace it with the FFG from scratch. If you keep the LCS use it for its intended mission to support the MARG during littoral combat ONLY.
If the ship needs 100 people, make sure that includes the people needed to do firefighting and damage control. Yes, a hit by a nuc killed all but that is usually not the case so lets man for saving the ship and put the bodies where they belong, on the ship and not ashore.
If the ship needs 100 people, make sure that includes the people needed to do firefighting and damage control. Yes, a hit by a nuc killed all but that is usually not the case so lets man for saving the ship and put the bodies where they belong, on the ship and not ashore.
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LCDR (Join to see)
CMDCM Gene Treants - 100 was just to use round numbers. All I am saying is that we need to have more shore duty billets for sailors to get a break from this high op-tempo deployment cycle we have found ourselves in.
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CMDCM Gene Treants
LCDR (Join to see) - Totally agree with you sir, I just don't want to find us in the Gold/Blue concept that I believe leads to more problems with maintenance than fixing the crew solves. I think ownership of the ship is very important and just being on board part-time does not lend to that. Yes, a break away from the ship, like we are seeing when the ship is in port and the crew is in berthing ashore might solve some of the problems, I agree.
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355 is nice, but unless they man them where they need to be and train the crews we will have the same problems we are having now.
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Very good and thorough article. Thanks for sharing.
IMO the Navy needs to buy a half dozen or so newer smaller conventionally powered carriers to take the workload off the CVN fleet.
They need more Cruisers to replace the Tico's before they fall apart. Makes me wonder if the real reason that Ticonderoga, Yorktown and Thomas S. Gates are still sitting in Philadelphia is because the Navy isn't 100% sure they won't need them again. Though I'm not sure the cost of reactivating and modernizing them would be much less than building new CG's it would certainly be faster especially considering that we don't even have a new Cruiser class designed yet.
Burke's, lots of em.
I don't agree with trying to up-gun the LCS and slap a FF classification on the design(s). These are the wrong ships for the Navy even if they are given some teeth they won't have the survivability of a real warship. Better to reactivate and modernize the OHPs that are in the best condition.
Of course all these ships means more crews, in order to improve recruiting and especially retention you need to make life better for sailors, that means larger crews to reduce the overall workload as well as increasing the number of liberty port visits a ship will see during and between deployments. On my son's last deployment they hit 2 liberty ports on the way out and 1 on the way back we used to hit 3 in each direction.
IMO the Navy needs to buy a half dozen or so newer smaller conventionally powered carriers to take the workload off the CVN fleet.
They need more Cruisers to replace the Tico's before they fall apart. Makes me wonder if the real reason that Ticonderoga, Yorktown and Thomas S. Gates are still sitting in Philadelphia is because the Navy isn't 100% sure they won't need them again. Though I'm not sure the cost of reactivating and modernizing them would be much less than building new CG's it would certainly be faster especially considering that we don't even have a new Cruiser class designed yet.
Burke's, lots of em.
I don't agree with trying to up-gun the LCS and slap a FF classification on the design(s). These are the wrong ships for the Navy even if they are given some teeth they won't have the survivability of a real warship. Better to reactivate and modernize the OHPs that are in the best condition.
Of course all these ships means more crews, in order to improve recruiting and especially retention you need to make life better for sailors, that means larger crews to reduce the overall workload as well as increasing the number of liberty port visits a ship will see during and between deployments. On my son's last deployment they hit 2 liberty ports on the way out and 1 on the way back we used to hit 3 in each direction.
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CMDCM Gene Treants
We have enough Carriers as it is between the Supercarriers and the Gator Carriers. Each of them requires its own escorts and that takes more Cruisers, Destroyers, (missing) Friggets, and Submarines. Not to mention support ships. Remember a real Carrier Battle Group also includes a MARG. I do remember going into the IO and Arabian Gulf as a Surface Action Group with a Cruiser and 6 Frigates when our Carrier could not make it (collision at sea).
The LCS concept is great for what they were designed to do and this is Littoral Combat. However, someone decided they needed to be more multifaceted and they are not! You cannot make a ship designed to fight close inshore a Friget no matter what you do.
Crews on Navy Ships need to be there for COMBAT and for fighting the ship in case of battle damage NOT just to operate them in time of peace as out peacetime "Leaders" believe and have manned our ships. You can only do so much with automatic systems, but damage control and firefighting is not part of the mix when the big bullets begin flying.
The LCS concept is great for what they were designed to do and this is Littoral Combat. However, someone decided they needed to be more multifaceted and they are not! You cannot make a ship designed to fight close inshore a Friget no matter what you do.
Crews on Navy Ships need to be there for COMBAT and for fighting the ship in case of battle damage NOT just to operate them in time of peace as out peacetime "Leaders" believe and have manned our ships. You can only do so much with automatic systems, but damage control and firefighting is not part of the mix when the big bullets begin flying.
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