US Military News, Reports, Data, etc.
- Thread starter tphuang
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Why choose a C-130J instead of a 737NG as the next TACAMO platform?
And a third feature article from the Congressional Budget Office (PDF) Some highlights
There are interesting measures of Lethality and Firepower on Slides 15 and 16. This is the first time I've seen those metrics. Sheltered life I guess.
As these three articles have articulated, the problems are known, the solutions are known, and spanning the gap between them is unachievable.
Yup, without a massive increase in budget for the Navy I don't see how they can buy and maintain a bigger force. I think it is important that to note that increasing the budget simply by increasing ship orders probably wouldn't help much either. The Navy would have to use its budget not only to order more ships, but directly subsidize a large build out of the shipbuilding infrastructure.
I don't see the political will to do that.
There is political will for a larger navy.
But, it simply isn't strong enough to overcome the practical difficulties in the way (a lot more money needed, expanding ship yards, actually finding workers and educate them, suplly chain etc.).
There is political want for a larger navy but, as SlothmanAllen pointed out, there isn't political will.
The US Navy has less ships than China's PLAN because of the failures of the LCS and Zumwalt programs.
The LCS produced a bunch of useless frigates which will be headed for the scrap heap, or any foolish US ally willing to take these crates, and the Zumwalt design was turned from the original conception of a missile arsenal ship, that would replace the Burkes, into a replacement for the Iowa class that would do shore bombardment with artillery guns due to Congressional meddling.
The US Navy basically wasted like three decades. And now they have to make do with rehashes of the Cold War era Burkes.
Any sort of significant increase is going to take decades to bear fruit. China didn't build its shipbuilding industry overnight. It has taken decades to get to the state it is in now. These things are not easy and take tons of money, politics and man power to see meaningful progress.
I posted a link to an article a while back that showed conclusively that the US was never really a major commercial shipbuilder, and even during World War 2 its yards were less efficient than those in the UK.
Any sort of solution is going to have to be two track. They need to change the laws so ships can be built in Japan and Korea while at the same time investing in building out their own shipbuilding capability. So its going to be extremely expensive. Oh, and it also has to survive changing political winds and a billion other things.
EDIT: Oh, and they are going to have to subsidize any commercial ships built in the US to to tune of billions of dollars per year due to the likely massive cost differences that exists between ships built in the US and Japan/Korea/China... and that assumes the quality can be good enough that people would even want them from US yards.
Double Edit: Also, China may have spent years supporting their industry, but as a country China likely had better incentives for people to work in shipbuilding. Shipbuilding in the US has to compete with dozens of other industries that pay just as good if not better and offer a far better work life balance.
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