Even The DoD Is Questioning (ANOTHER !!!1!) $40 Billion Dollar Aircraft Carrier

[unhappycamper]

unhappycamper note: Since the ‘Pentagon’ (DoD? Gannett?) has ‘requested’ that I only post one paragraph from articles on Army Times, and Airforce Times, To keep in that same (new) tradition, I will also do the same for for articles on Navy Times, Marine Corps Times, stripes.com and military.com.
To read the article in the military's own words, you will need to click the link.

Read all about Fair Use here. It sure is beginning to smell like fascism.

unhappycamper summary of this article: Give it up, dudes. You have a better chance of going to the moon than you do buying another one of these 'technological marvels'.



The next big carrier question
By Philip Ewing Friday, August 12th, 2011 1:00 pm
Posted in Naval

The Navy is in a bind here. It needs and wants the new ship, but you can only stretch out a project even this major by so much. So should it absorb the upfront budget hit of building the new JFK under a normal schedule and try to make sacrifices elsewhere, or should it try to get the savings in the near term but risk ultimately paying more under a prolonged, French-style shipbuilding cycle? You can almost hear the admiral saying, “well we’re looking at all our options here, and we’d like to wait for the results of the comprehensive strategic review before we make any final decisions” — but that doesn’t change the fact that the Navy’s current ships will eventually wear out, and that it needs to keep the Newport News shipyard in business and functioning well.

[no_hypocrisy]

1. I know how the Navy can get its brand new ship.

Theme and variation on an idea.

[Recursion]

2. It's a shame Rumsfeld fucked up Iraq so badly, because his acquisitions reforms were good

Actually on the acquisitions and spending side he was in many ways a very good SECDEF. But the Pentagon waited him out (just like they did in the 1970s) and so we're still stuck with a 20-year acquisition cycle for the Navy (meaning we're now getting weapons systems delivered that were being requested when the Soviet Union still existed) and we've sunk too much money into boondoggles like this program to contemplate ditching them.

[Harmony Blue]

3. Air craft carriers in this era of modern warfare

are big, juicy floating targets.

[Recursion]

4. Yup. The USS Cole should have been a wake-up call

Three guys in a Zodiac can do a lot more damage than a Silkworm, particularly since the PHALANX system's ballistics don't depress very well.

The LCS was supposed to be the answer to this, but it's currently mired in development hell also.

[Johnyawl]

5. Nonsense

Three guys in a Zodiac can do a lot more damage than a Silkworm, particularly since the PHALANX system's ballistics don't depress very well

What happened to the USS Cole was easily preventable with a minimum amount of security efforts. You don't need the PHALANX system to keep three guys in a zodiac away from your ass, you need some sea level security.

The fact that the Cole incident hasn't been repeated in the past eleven years is all the evidence you need to know that what happened in Yemen 11 years ago was meaningless, in stratigic terms, and we would be fools planning any strategy to counter that "weapon".

And I could point out the obvious, that while they managed to blow a hole in the side of the Cole, and kill 17 sailors, they failed to sink the ship. The hull of an aircraft carrier is substantially thicker, with far more robust structural componants, then that of a destroyer, and would have suffered far less damage.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

6. There's a lot of pork riding on those boats.

[sarcasmo]

7. How much would it help to pump that 40billion into our infrastructure?