HG S2 (Intel Bot)

The “Out Years” is fantasy. It is a place where people wishcast the future they want. 

Let’s take a quick look at this gem from the Annual Long-Range Plan for Construction of Naval Vessels for FY 2007.

How'd that work out for us?

From that report looking forward nine years to 2016, it shows us having spent money on building in that time period … what exactly?

Seven (7) DD(X), aka DDG-1000, and six (6) CG(X).

Yeah … so be careful trusting these documents. That is why I simply refuse to listen to anyone’s pontifications on 2040 or 2045. Come on people. It’s insulting.

Let’s stick with that template of 9-years above, it's bad enough. From today that window would get us to 2031. Depending on who you talk to, that is either in the center or slightly right of center of the period expected to be the time of greatest danger with conflict over Taiwan with the People’s Republic of China. It also plays well with the issues we raised with the Hudson Institute’s Bryan Clark on Midrats last Sunday.

As men smarter than me have said, there are no magic beans. By the end of the decade there will be no “new” deployable program that will be able to change the fight west of Wake except on the margins in year-1 of any war. We will fight, +/-, at the end of the decade with what we have displacing water and making shadows on the ramp today. 

There are things that we have right now – at or near IOC – that may, if given the proper resources and focus, be significant additions to our combat power by the end of the decade.

I’d point you to Sunday’s Midrats for a series of platforms and capabilities that fit that bill, but today I want to focus on one that really got my attention – mostly because it is a historically proven force multiplier, engines.

Throughout aviation history marginal existing aircraft were made good, and good aircraft made great simply by updating engines.

In recent history, two example stand out.

First the USAF re-engined its KC-135s;

The re-engined tanker, designated either the KC-135R or KC-135T, can offload 50 percent more fuel, is 25 percent more fuel efficient, costs 25 percent less to operate and is 96 percent quieter than the KC-135A.

On the Navy side of the house, there was the re-engined F-14;

Navy Secretary John F. Lehman Jr. went on to say the TF30 engine “in the F-14 is probably the worst engine-airplane mismatch we have had in many years. The TF30 engine is just a terrible engine and has accounted for 28.2 percent of all F14 crashes.”

…

In 1987, F-14s began receiving new engines in the General Electric F110, which offered more thrust and eliminated many of the reliability problems associated with the TF30. These improved F-14Bs and the subsequent F-14Ds were very much the Tomcat of Top Gun fame, and as a result, you’ll often find Tomcat fans dismissing the TF30’s woes as a problem specific to the F-14A in the early days of operation.

See the pattern?

What does this have to do with any future conflict with China?

The self-inflicted vulnerability of our airwing and its well-known retreat from range with a deck full of short-legged strike fighters with no organic tanking (sorry, buddy tanking does not count) needs to be fixed at sea or balanced ashore.

While there is a chance to get a fair number of deployable unmanned tankers by the end of the decade, that is about the only thing we have on the horizon. Mindless dithering, entitlement, and sloth means our new carrier capable aircraft won’t be ready for the fight. 

What do we have that, possibly, might be able to help ashore for the USAF aircraft we will need beyond the finite number of heavy bombers and the delicate inventory of stand-off weapons they carry?

Though there are questions if it could be installed in the USN’s F-35C due to space constraints with the tailhook, and unquestionably can’t fit in the F-35B … for the land-based F-35A an engine replacement via the Adaptive Engine Transition Program (AETP) could provide a 25-30% increase in range. 

Pratt & Whitney is testing its new XA101 Adaptive Engine Transition Program powerplant and expects to conclude testing its two examples by the end of next year, company military engines division president Matthew Bromberg revealed in an interview. He expects that two-thirds of the technology developed from AETP could find its way into earlier engines now flying with the Air Force.

The company is “thrilled” to have two options available for the Air Force and F-35 partners to choose from for an upgrade to the fighter’s propulsion system, Bromberg said. GE Aviation has developed the XA100 AETP engine as a competitor to Pratt & Whitney’s version.

Testing of “our first new fighter engine in 30 years … was successful,” Bromberg said. The first XA101 and its twin will shuttle back and forth between Pratt & Whitney’s facilities and the Air Force’s Arnold Engineering Center in Tullahoma, Tenn., for the next year or so, generating more data. The Air Force and F-35 Joint Program Office will use the data to help decide whether the F-35 should get an all-new powerplant—one of the AETP engines—or take Pratt & Whitney up on its offer of an enhanced version of the F135 engine already in the F-35 fighter.

Pratt & Whitney succeeded in achieving the AETP’s goals, which were to obtain 10 percent improvement in thrust and 25 percent improvements in both fuel efficiency and thermal management, Bromberg said. “We know we can do that,” he said.

Range and endurance is a primary driver for any conflict in the Pacific. If we need more range inside 5-10 year window, AETP is one of the few ways I can see it happening.

Time is short … and so is the range of our aircraft. 

All hail the F-35D.

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Americas

A new F-35A was delivered to Edwards Air Force Base on August 1 for assignment with the 461st Flight Test Squadron (FLTS). It is the first of six F-35As that the squadron and the F-35 Lightning II Integrated Test Force will use to test the Technical Refresh 3 and Block 4 configurations. For all three variants of the F-35, the 461 FLTS is the lead developmental flight test unit for sensors, weapons, and software.

BAE Systems Land & Armaments won an $88 million contract for Amphibious Combat Vehicles (ACV). The total cumulative face value of the contract is $1,910,796,347. This contract modification procures labor and material for the Amphibious Combat Vehicle Mission Role Variant Medium Caliber Cannon (ACV-30) for post-critical design review design and development, production representative test vehicles, and support for test activities. Marine Corps Systems Command, Quantico, Virginia, is the contracting activity. Work will take place in California, Maryland, Norway, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, California, Minnesota, Michigan, Phoenix, New Mexico, Italy and Mississippi. Estimated completion date is July 2025.

Middle East & Africa

Vertex Aerospace won a $62.8 million deal, which provides for organizational level and authorized intermediate level aircraft maintenance, logistics support, and limited repair of common support equipment for three KC-130J aircraft for the government of Kuwait. Kuwait flies its three KC-130Js on a mix of transport and tanker missions. Work will take place in Kuwait and Mississippi. Expected completion will be in August 2027.

Europe

Slovakia’s Minister of Defence has refuted media reports that the country’s MiG-29 fighters have been transferred to Ukraine. “Our MiG-29 fighters are not in Ukraine. This is false information. They are still at Slia?,” Jaroslav Na? was quoted as saying. He added that an official retirement ceremony for the MiG-29s will be held on Aug. 27 at the Slovak International Air Festival.

Asia-Pacific

Philippine officials are considering a US offer to provide heavy-lift helicopters like its widely used Chinooks after Manila scrapped a deal to buy military choppers from Russia due to fears of Western sanctions, the Philippine ambassador to Washington said Monday. Then-President Rodrigo Duterte approved the cancellation of the signed deal to buy 16 Russian Mi-17 helicopters due to concerns over possible Western sanctions, which could hamper fast bank transfers of the income Filipino workers send home from the U.S. and other Western countries, Ambassador Jose Romualdez said.

About 100 aircraft and 2500 military personnel from 17 nations will arrive in Australia’s Northern Territory in mid-August to commence Exercise Pitch Black 2022. The German Air Force is set to travel to Australia to make its debut in the country’s multi-national exercise, marking the first time the German and Australian forces have trained together.

Today’s Video

WATCH: Slovak MiG-29 in action, part 12, go around and landing in pair by sunset and at night

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To build the Navy we need, the one thing we have to get right is - and this seems obvious - to successfully build ships. A lot of them.

Easy to type, hard to do.  While we have had many well-documented troubles this century, we also have some notable successes that give hope we can do it right when we want to.

Returning today with another top-shelf guest post, Bryan McGrath picks up the conversation with a reminder of what we did get right, and what we need to do with that institutional capital.

Bryan, over to you.

When a “Murderers Row” of Navalists (Hendrix, Salamander, Work) all take to the interwebs within the same week to opine on the recent pathologies of American naval shipbuilding, one is forced to take note. As I toil and scribble in the same lanes as these fellows, I feel called to add my thoughts to the mix, some of which track well with theirs, some of which are not well-aligned, and some of which touch on issues their essays chose not to address. Their flurry of essays provides occasion to reflect upon the state of naval shipbuilding in the United States. With China’s naval expansion proceeding at an alarming pace and multiple studies converging on the finding that the U.S. Navy is too small, America must build more warships. This need is complicated by recent, well-documented descriptions of delays, cost overruns, and technical failures, raising questions about whether the United States is up to the task. This essay asserts that it is, but only if tough lessons are implemented, sufficient resources are applied, common sense is embraced, and political will is demonstrated. Some of this my esteemed colleagues touch on, some they do not. 

The Acquisition Kluge

The first thing to consider before we bend any steel or take to the computer-aided design software is that the acquisition of Navy warships exists within a complicated cauldron of interlocking systems and stakeholders to include executive branch policy making, legislative branch resourcing, Department of Defense/Navy budgetary prioritization and strategy-making, and industrial base concerns, to name only a few. There are no silver bullets, there are no magic beans. The act of acquiring warships is hard, and countless trade-offs among and within these systems are a feature, not a bug. 

This complex kluge creates numerous perverse incentives among the stakeholders. At the national level, we are unable to make coherent grand strategy, and so what kind of and how big a Navy we need devolves to slight deviations from the Navy we have, even when that Navy is patently insufficient. When the Navy does seek to develop a new class of ship, it consistently understates both the cost of the first in class and the life-cycle costs that it will incur. Why? Because everyone involved has an interest in keeping “sticker shock” from derailing the acquisition, including Congress. Better to get the program up and operating and ask for more money later than to drive away interest in a program due to its expense. 

Compounding this kabuki is the problem of immature designs, and much of the blame here belongs in the Pentagon. Whether one points to Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld’s “transformational” edicts to both the FORD Class CVN program and the DDX program (now the DDG 1000) resulting in the parallel integration of numerous immature technologies, or the similarly “transformational” decision to provide potential LCS vendors with “performance specifications” rather than “design specifications” (resulting in brittle supply chains and the introduction of one-of-a-kind and unproven technology in main propulsion 

and combat systems), the pathologies of all three programs (CVN, DDG 1000, and LCS) are in part the result of immature designs incorporating unready, untested, and unsupported technology. Additionally, as part of the post-Cold War move to favor “efficiency” (over effectiveness), the Navy’s own technical community was dramatically down-sized, resulting in a situation in which it attempted—under pressure from OSD and from its own questionable decision-making—to oversee the development of increasingly complex warships with unfamiliar technology utilizing a workforce that was not up to the task. This was a recipe for failure, and three ship classes suffered as a result. 

Is All the News Bad?

Reading the thoughts of my friends Jerry Hendrix, Bob Work, and Commander Salamander on the turmoil in naval shipbuilding of the past two decades provides a depressing but incomplete picture of the status of American warship building. The United States is at this moment, building several classes of ships that are the envy of the world-- effectively and efficiently--to include the VIRGINIA Class attack submarine, the ARLEIGH BURKE Class destroyer, and two classes of large amphibious ships (LPD and LHA). The Navy and the Congress possess such confidence in these ships that they are routinely acquired in batches, rather than with individual contracts for each hull. What is the difference in these ships and the three (CVN, DDG 1000, LCS) discussed earlier?

The simple answer is that they are mature programs with generally stable designs. The ship pictured below at its recent commissioning ceremony--USS FORT LAUDERDALE (LPD 28)—is the beneficiary of years of construction experience and what the industry calls “learning”. More efficient processes are created, early design problems are overcome, and real costs decline the longer a production line remains open. The VIRGINIA Class SSN, DDG51 class, and the LPD 17 class all had early problems to overcome, but the Navy and the shipyards—with considerable oversight from Congress—worked those problems out and put the programs on a steady course. As of this writing, it appears that similar conditions are prevailing in the construction of follow-on FORD Class CVN’s. 

The point here is that America CAN build ships; it builds GREAT ships. But given the pace of China’s Navy buildup and the considerable number of new and newly modernized ships in the pipeline, how can the Navy and other stakeholders in the acquisition process behave differently to achieve positive results earlier rather than later?

What Is to Be Done?

In his recent guidance to the Navy’s Surface Forces called “The Competitive Edge”, VADM Roy Kitchener USN (Commander U.S. Naval Forces) identified ten “new or modernized platforms” that will join the fleet or be in construction over the next ten years. Those platforms are: 

• ZUMWALT-Class Destroyers (DDG 1000) with Conventional Prompt Strike (CPS)
• ARLEIGH BURKE Class Guided Missile Destroyers (Flight III)
• ARLEIGH BURKE Class Guided Missile Destroyers (Flight IIA Modernization)
• LCS Lethality and Survivability Upgrade
• CONSTELLATION-Class Guided Missile Frigate (FFG 62)
• Light Amphibious Warship (LAW)
• Medium Unmanned Surface Vessels (MUSV)
• Large Unmanned Surface Vessels (LUSV)
• SAN ANTONIO Class Amphibious Transport Dock (LPD 17 Flight II)
• Next Generation Guided Missile Destroyers (DDG (X))

This is a considerable amount of complexity entering the fleet in the next decade, and unless lessons from the past twenty years of frustration are implemented among all the various stakeholders, that frustration will continue. Here are several suggested focus areas:

Design Maturity. Civilian and uniformed leadership of the Navy should be required by Congress to certify design maturity and maturity of new technologies prior to proceeding to construction. Concurrency must be avoided at all costs, and new capabilities should be developed and proven in land-based test facilities PRIOR to introduction. Exceptions would include corrections of obvious mistakes, and changes to ships that are built at wider intervals (like aircraft carriers and amphibious assault ships). Of note, well into the Biden Administration’s second year, the Navy does not have a Senate confirmed Assistant Secretary for Research, Development, and Acquisition (ASN RDA), nor has one been nominated. 

Additionally, Congress must play a constructive role here by providing funding for design and testing to support Navy acquisition timelines and for additional land-based test capacity (an unsung Congressional achievement of late). These funds are often harvested and re-applied elsewhere, which causes acquisition delays (at best) and at worst—contributes to design immaturity as the Navy rushes to meet production schedules. The best of all cases from a Congressional oversight standpoint is to provide the design and testing resources when they are requested but to relentlessly hold the line on construction until satisfied of design and technology maturity. Long lead-time material must be closely managed to ensure availability.  

Requirements Discipline. When and if this country becomes serious enough about force structure to seat a Senate-confirmed official at ASN RDA, that individual must be utterly ruthless in shooting down the good idea fairy, even if that fairy appears in khaki with several stars on the collar. Multiple iterations of mature designs should be constructed to reap pricing benefits, with (as stated above) changes and capabilities proved and binned awaiting a new “tranche” of ships into which they will be integrated. 

A Virtuous Cycle of Stability and Investment. There is, within the latest Navy 30 Year Shipbuilding Plan, discussion of industrial base concerns in both the surface and submarine shipbuilding narratives, with no less an authority than the CNO casting doubt. Building multiple VIRGINIA Class SSN’s and the COLUMBIA Class SSBN simultaneously will surely flex the submarine industrial base, but the suggestion that there is not additional capacity in the surface industrial base is misplaced (although skilled workforce issues impact shipbuilding as much as most other industrial concerns). Where there are serious problems is within the supply chain, as tier 2 and 3 suppliers exit their businesses in response to inconsistent demand signals from the Navy. This inconsistency is important to the entire industry, as publicly held businesses must answer to shareholders who would (rightly) question capital investments driven by the behavior of their monopsonic partner. 

Leverage Hot Production Lines. Both tier 1 shipyards (HII and Bath Iron Works) are transitioning to the Flight III DDG line of ARLEIGH BURKE Destroyers—HII from building Flight II’s, and BIW from building DDG 1000’s.  The first hull at HII is nearing completion, and the first at BIW is under construction. Hot production lines also exist in the LPD 17 program and the LHA program. The Navy should plan to and budget for AT LEAST 2 SSN’s a year (in addition to the required SSBN program), 2 large surface combatants a year, 1 LPD 17 every other year, 1 LHA every four years and 1 CVN every five years. 

USS FORT LAUDERDALE (LPD 28)

For those hearkening back to paragraph three where I stated “…what kind of and how big a Navy we need devolves to slight deviations from the Navy we have…”, be advised that what I suggest above is just a part—a large part, but just a part—of the building program we need. We (the kluge cited earlier) have dithered long enough on unmanned platforms on and under the ocean, and the dearth of new Medium USV acquisitions in the President’s FY23 budget is concerning. A third of the 2045 fleet is to be unmanned, and if we hope to get there, we need to start bending metal, much of which will be done at more modestly sized yards. And then there is the new frigate. 

Compete the CONSTELLATION Class As Soon As Possible. It is difficult to see in the Navy’s plans a desire to bring on a second yard to build the CONSTELLATION Class frigate any time soon. Whether this is an architecture decision, a resource decision, or a risk decision is not known to me, but it is logical to assume that if the Navy is to grow larger in the coming years, more of these ships must be built. The design chosen by the Navy—while based upon a successful European hull—is considerably different from the parent design, in no small measure due to requirements for survivability driven by NAVSEA. Those requirements are often seen as onerous, but one important fact distinguishes STARK, SAMUEL B ROBERTS, PRINCETON, TRIPOLI, MCCAIN, and FITZGERALD from MOSKVA, and that is that only one of these ships went to the bottom. That the yard chosen to build CONSTELLATION has never built a ship of this size and complexity before is even more reason to expeditiously compete the design among the other building yards, both to get to at least four hulls per year and a means of backstopping production risk. Some would caution against this path, citing the need for the Navy and its shipbuilding partner to “learn” from the first hull. While there is indeed learning to be done, there is precedent worth considering in the transition from building CG 47’s to DDG 51’s. Bath Iron Works won the contract for the ARLEIGH BURKE, and Ingalls began construction on BARRY two years after ARLEIGH BURKE construction began, with the yards competing on hulls and multi-year procurements ever since. 

Like I said earlier, shipbuilding is hard. But it is harder when costs are consistently and predictably under-estimated (I’m no math major, but there seems to be a fudge factor suggested here), when the key policy and oversight positions are not filled, when construction begins before plans are ready, when considerable changes are made from hull to hull without discipline and testing, and when there are dramatic swings in shipbuilding plans that frustrate coherent capital investing. 

The nation needs a larger Navy; it needs more of the same and it needs more of different. It needs capacity and capability. It needs more and more predictable resources. More than anything else though, it needs this country’s national security decision making elite to walk away from any notion that the Navy the nation needs can be had on the cheap, that other instruments of government can make up for what the Navy does every day around the world, and that we can “technology” our way out of the seapower deficit we are in. Winter is coming.

Bryan McGrath is the Managing Director of The FerryBridge Group LLC. He has clients in government and industry. His public writing and speaking represents his own opinions. 

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Americas

Bath Iron Works won a $35.4 million contract modification for lead yard support effort for the DDG-51 Class Guided Missile Destroyer program. Work will take place in Maine. Estimated completion will be in June 2023. The Naval Sea Systems Command, Washington, DC, is the contracting activity.

General Dynamics won a $59.8 million modification for multiple items used in the Abrams Main Battle Tank, Stryker Family of Vehicles, Light Armored Vehicle Family of Vehicles, Cougar, Buffalo and RG-31. The M1 Abrams is a third-generation American main battle tank designed by Chrysler Defense and named for General Creighton Abrams. Work will take place in Florida. Estimated completion date is July 29, 2029. The contracting activity is the Defense Logistics Agency Land and Maritime, Columbus, Ohio.

Middle East & Africa

The German defense ministry said Friday it had suspended most of its operations in Mali after the local military-led government denied flyover rights to a UN peacekeeping mission. “The Malian government has once again refused to give flyover rights to a flight planned today” for the rotation of personnel on the ground, a ministry spokesman said at a regular press conference. In response, Germany had decided to “suspend until further notice the operations of our reconnaissance forces and CH-53 (helicopter) transport flights.”

Europe

In an interview with Finnish daily Iltalehti, Estonia’s Minister of Defense Hanno Pevkur says his country will integrate its coastal anti-ship missile system with Finland. This will create a choke point for Russian warships in the Gulf of Finland. The widest point of the gulf is 120km and the narrowest is just 52km. The Blue Spear anti-ship missile has been ordered by Estonia and it has a range of 290km. Finland currently deploys the MTO 85M, which is the Saab RBS 15 anti-ship missile.

The Hellenic Air Force will soon send a letter of request (LOR) to the United States for the upgrade of 38 F-16C/D Block 50 fighters to the V variant. These fighters will be upgraded at Nea Anchialos Air Base while two Greek F-16s have completed their upgrade to the F-16V standard and will soon be used to train pilots. Older F-16 Block 30s that are in Greek inventory will not undergo the upgrade process.

Asia-Pacific

The Australian Department of Defence unveiled the Bushmaster electric protected military vehicle (ePMV) reflecting an effort, it said, to ensure the Australian Army is ‘future ready’. The prototype was showcased on August 10 at the Chief of Army Symposium, a three-day event in Adelaide. The vehicle was developed by the Australian Army’s Robotic and Autonomous Systems Implementation & Coordination Office (RICO), working in collaboration with an Australian company, 3ME Technology, which specialises in lithium-ion battery systems for mining and military vehicles, and the DoD’s Defence Science and Technology Group (DSTG).

Today’s Video

WATCH: Here is The New Generation of High-Tech, Heavily Armed DDG 51 Flight III Destroyers

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As a naval officer, what legacy do you wish to leave? 

Few mortals know the day and time, but if you are looking for a benchmark, you would be hard pressed not to look to Captain Paul Rinn, USN and say, "That. Him. There."

As skipper of the frigate Samuel B. Roberts, Capt. Rinn took his crew into the war-torn Persian Gulf where they joined other U.S. warships protecting Kuwaiti tankers that had been reflagged as American vessels during the Iran-Iraq War. Returning from a convoy on April 14, the frigate struck an Iranian contact mine, which blew a massive hole in the hull.

The explosion broke the Roberts’s keel and knocked out its electrical power. The ship immediately began taking on water. But Capt. Rinn had prepared his crew for such an emergency, crew members recalled, and over four grueling hours they saved the vessel, which the Navy repaired and kept in service for another 27 years.

The fight to save Samuel B. Roberts remains a case study in combat preparedness and a model emulated by successive generations of commanding officers, said Bryan McGrath, a retired U.S. Navy destroyer captain and consultant.

“Captain Rinn had enormous influence in the way that captains who commanded after him approached their job,” Capt. McGrath said. “What we all heard from our captains and what we all heard from the training pipeline was a similar story: We’re going to practice this over and again, until it’s perfect. And then we’re going to practice it perfectly over and over again.

“That’s what I told my crew maybe 500 times. That is the legacy of Paul Rinn and the lessons that came out of Samuel B. Roberts: They were ready. They had prepared. They had actually thought through things. And they performed when it was most important.”

Paul X. Rinn, a Vietnam War veteran and ship captain who in 1988 led a desperate effort to save a U.S. Navy vessel from sinking after it struck an Iranian mine, died Aug. 3. He was 75.

His inspirational leadership in the face of crisis made him an icon among fellow sailors long after his retirement at the rank of captain in 1997. He served 29 years in the Navy and settled in Fairfax Station, eventually turning full-time to lecturing on military leadership and shipboard operations at the service’s professional schools and elsewhere.

Capt. Rinn died unexpectedly while in Boston for a speaking engagement, his family said. A cause of death was not provided.

Very nice job by David Larter and Brad Pensiton. You should take the time to read the whole obit.

If you didn't catch the interview we did with Brad on Midrats about his book on Captain Rinn's crew and the Sammy B., No Higher Honor.

You can catch the podcast here.

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The legal system works at the speed of smell, but we are getting closer to what may be one of the most important civil rights cases to come in front of the Supreme Court in the last half century.

There are new readers coming to CDRSalamander every day, so once again let me set the foundation. The cornerstones are rather simple but essential for our wondrously polyglot experimental republic to survive; persons deserve to be judged as individuals; individuals deserve equal opportunity; people deserve to be judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin; no favor should be given to nor ill-favor placed on any person based on something they can do nothing about – their race, creed, color, or national origin, etc.

With that out of the way – it really should be self-evident, but the excessively emotive on this topic sometimes need a reminder – let us get back to the subject of todays DivThu.

The case in question is Students for Fair Admission v. President and Fellows of Harvard College & the University of North Carolina that is finally on the docket of SCOTUS. In summary, universities have shamefully been discriminating against different ethnic groups in favor of those they deem more desirable. Merit, objective criteria for success, academic excellence, and all those things one would expect to be determining factors are not what is driving the zero-sum game that is admissions. No, the diversity industry (those who derive financial, power, or psychological gain from promoting discrimination), have their metrics and they must be met. Turning their stated goals on it head, they are not about equal opportunity or the elimination of discrimination or sectarian division, instead they have decided that they want to use these evil methods to pursue their own goal; equity.

Stuck in a mid-20th Century mindset, they desire to legally be able to discriminate against people born in the 21st Century based on their race, creed, color, etc while at the same time, picking a desired group that they want to give preferential treatment to based on self-identified criteria.

Regulars of DivThu know the extended commentary. New people can click the “Diversity” tab to review if they wish.

This is where the military comes in.

It didn't have to weigh in on this political topic - but ideologs decided they needed a shield of political retired General and Flag Officers ... so be it.

Shots fired. Let the battle be joined. 

As we have documented through the last two decades – the military (especially at the service academies) have protested that they do not discriminate in admissions, but of course we know they do. Many of us have seen the data. As the data became known, then the excuses and smoke screens came out, but in the last half decade or more as the light of truth became brighter on their actions, they decide to turn in to the skid and claim, “Yes, we discriminate. Discrimination is a good thing. We will keep doing it. You will like it, and if you protest against our bigotry we will call you a bigot.” 

You know the drill.

In this case that involves college admissions, the natsec left decided that they would service-shame the civilian side of the house by gathering a bunch of retired senior officers to – and this is the amazing part – say, “Universities need to be allowed to discriminate, because if you don’t let them discriminate, then we won’t be able to discriminate. We love discrimination and we will lose all our wars if we can’t continue.”

Strange flex, and I’m taking a little artistic license with their verbiage, but there it is.

Well, some interesting things have come out that connect two cases, one from 2015, and the other the one that is the subject in today’s post.

I’d like you to look over two amici curiae. The first one from 2015’s Fisher vs. University of Texas at Austin.  You can read the details of the case here.

There was an amici curiae filed in 2015 that you can read here signed by 34 retired senior officers, a former Senator and Medal of Honor recipient, and one of Bill Clinton’s Army Secretary, Joe Reeder. Remember that name…he is one of the major players in the 2015 and 2022 efforts.

In their amici curiae they state;

In Grutter, Justice O’Connor, writing for the majority, stated:

It has been 25 years since Justice Powell first approved the use of race to further an interest in student body diversity in the context of public higher education. . . . We expect that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today. 539 U.S. at 343. 

History may prove Justice O’Connor’s prediction prescient, but the day that racial preferences are no longer necessary to achieve student body diversity in the context of public higher education has not yet arrived. 

That was always a great gift to those who have been fighting this fight for so long. At last, a high profile “Ref. A” out in the open so that no one is silent due to a whole variety of reasons, that, yes, the military does discriminate.

People – though a shrinking pool of the ideological and ignorant – still claim that this does not take place, but even those who did not see it firsthand now at least had a Ref. A. to push

So, we now have Students for Fair Admission v. President and Fellows of Harvard College & the University of North Carolina. If you need the details of that case, click here.

We have a 2022 amici curiae for this case as well with Joe Reeder and his law firm again at the front.

We have this time 35 (33 retired GOFO plus Sen. Kerry and Reeder) signing on vice 36. Their Summary of the Argument seven years later from Fisher reads in part;

Prohibiting educational institutions from using modest, race-conscious admissions policies would impair the military’s ability to maintain diverse leadership, and thereby seriously undermine its institutional legitimacy and operational effectiveness. Amici respectfully request that, in considering whether to reverse decades of precedent affirming the constitutionality of such admissions policies, the Court will continue to consider how such policies enable the military to serve our Nation’s security interests.

What a gift to truth. Their policies can never survive the light of day. They can try to defend it – but especially as our nation becomes even more mixed-heritage – as the people are WAY ahead of the entrenched sectarians – fewer people are going to see any positive attribute to having government institutions line up with some outdated “one drop” rule, or look the other way to red in tooth and claw racial self-identification fraud for fun and profit.

Nope, however, there are some retire GOFO who are quite happy to. 

Let’s look at those 34 GOFO who signed on in 2015 and see which way the wind is blowing. Of those 34 GOFO, 15 returned to sign the 2022 document.

Huh.

What about the other 19? Well, three have passed away (Clemins, Griffith, and Neal) and one LTG Becton, USA (Ret.) is 96 years old. That leaves 15 who decided that 2022 is a different time and it was time to reassess.

Those who signed on in 2015 but did not return in 2022 were Abizaid, Brown, Casey, Dunwoody, Fogleman, Giambastiani, Keane, Maddox, Magnus, Powell, Prueder, Regni, Rondwau, Schwartz, and Tilelli. 

The highest profile the non-repeats are Abizaid, Casey, Fogleman, Keane, & Powell. That begs  the question, "What caused them not to join?" They will have to answer that on their own.

Who are the repeat defender who are doubling down on pro-discrimination? Blair, Christman, Clark, Hill, Inman, Jumper, Lennox, Lyles, Mullen (of course), Myers, and Oelstrom.

Look aback at who the high-profile non-repeats are. That is quite the group who did not return. Who replaced them? Abbot, Bolden, Bostick, Brooks, Carter, Caslen, Dunford, Haney, Johnson, McRaven (of course), Miller, Robinson, and Scaparotti. 

Who is high-profile in this group? Dunford, McRaven, and Scaparotti I think.

This is a great filtering mechanism to see who is who in the zoo, so to speak. A Salamander Pardon to 2015 alumni will be provided to those who did not show up in 2022, and BZ to a few high profile people whose name is not on either and will given a respectful nod to.

However, to come back in 2022 knowing the details of what this case is … that is just plain clear as day what these people support.

Noted. 

A final note, an organization called Veterans for Fairness and Merit also submitted an amici curiae for the latest case. You can read it in full here, but of note; remember the alumni from 2015? General Ronald R. Fogleman, USAF (Ret.) is on that amici curiae. He saw the light and didn’t just demur, put his name to it.

BZ.

Watch this case. It is time that we meet the promise of our nation’s founding and to address the reality of the 21st Century. The time for racial discrimination and preferences is over. No more sectarianism.

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Americas

Lockheed Martin won a $12.9 million deal for AEGIS design agent field engineering services. Aegis is an integrated missile guidance system used on US Navy and allied ships to protect the battle group. Work will take place in Virginia, California, Hawaii, Japan, Washington and California. Estimated completion date is in September 2023.

The US Army is integrating a 20 kW-class laser weapon system into its new Infantry Squad Vehicle (ISV) to help soldiers down smaller unmanned aerial systems (UASs), according to the director of the service’s Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office Lieutenant General Neil Thurgood. The three-star general spoke at the Space and Missile Defense symposium about a host of programmes under his purview including directed energy initiatives. At the event, he announced that senior service leaders recently approved the development of an Army Multi-Purpose High Energy Laser (AMP-HEL) prototype that they want completed by the end of September 2023.

Middle East & Africa

Mali on Tuesday received military jets and a combat helicopter from Russia. During a ceremony, L-39 and Sukhoi-25 jets as well as Mi-24P helicopter gunships were displayed. No information was disclosed about the conditions for acquiring the gunships. Previous Russian arms deliveries made public this year, were helicopters and surveillance radars as well as mobile radar systems.

Europe

Babcock International has signed it’s second deal in a fortnight to aimed at offering Israeli technologies for British defense programs. The British company’s latest agreement with Israel Aerospace Industries and its subsidiary Elta Systems is aimed at proposing a radar for the Defence Ministry’s Serpens program.

The Spanish military took delivery of a THeMIS robotic vehicle, made by Estonia’s Milrem Robotics, to gauge how unmanned ground technology can improve operations of its ground forces, the company announced August 9. The evaluation comes as some European armies are in the market to equip their soldiers with robots for anything from cargo carrying to surveillance and attack missions.

Asia-Pacific

Taiwan’s army held another live-fire drill Thursday after Beijing ended its largest-ever military exercises around the island and repeated threats to bring the self-ruled democracy under its control. China announced carrying out fresh military drills around Taiwan Monday, days after US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to the island escalated tensions between the two powers.

Today’s Video

WATCH: Mi-24P In War Thunder : A Basic Review

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Americas

BAE Systems Information and Electronic Systems won a $13.5 million order, which provides for the ALR-56M radar warning receiver, C-130J Block Cycle F, Operational Flight Program and Mission Data File Generation updates and system services. Work will be performed in Totowa, New Jersey, and is expected to be completed August 9, 2024.

Boeing won a $278 million ordering agreement for the procurement of F/A-18 aircraft consumable parts. This is a five-year base contract with one five-year option period. The performance completion date is August 8, 2027. Using military service is the Navy. Type of appropriation is fiscal 2022 through 2027 defense working capital funds. The contracting activity is the Defense Logistics Agency Aviation, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Boeing has provided over 430 F/A-18E/Fs to the Navy since the early 2000s. The aircraft serves as the frontline strike fighter of the service branch, supporting air combat operations from aircraft carriers.

Middle East & Africa

Several types of previously unseen armoured vehicle and unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) were displayed during a parade held by the Armed Forces of Côte d’Ivoire (FACI) on August 7. TV coverage of the parade in Yamoussoukro to commemorate the 62nd anniversary of the country’s independence showed it included 20 of the FACI’s new Otokar Cobra II light armoured vehicles (LAVs), including an ambulance and a recovery vehicle.

Europe

Lockheed Martin won a $524 million modification, which increases the ceiling to procure long-lead time materials, parts, components, and effort for the production of seven Lot 15 F-35A aircraft, two Lot 15 F-35B aircraft, seven Lot 16 F-35A, and two Lot 16 F-35B aircraft for the government of Italy. Work will take place on Texas, California, the UK, Italy, Florida, New Hampshire, Maryland and Japan. Estimated completion will be in June 2025.

Asia-Pacific

South Korea’s government stressed Wednesday it will make its own decisions in strengthening its defenses against North Korean threats, rejecting Chinese calls that it continue the polices of Seoul’s previous government that refrained from adding more US anti-missile batteries that are strongly opposed by Beijing. The differences between South Korea and China underscored a reemerging rift between the countries just a day after their top diplomats met in eastern China and expressed hope that the issue wouldn’t become a “stumbling stone” in relations. Bilateral ties went downhill in 2017 when South Korea installed a missile battery employing the THAAD, in response to nuclear and missile threats from North Korea.

The Philippines has scrapped an order for 16 Russian military helicopters, an official confirmed Wednesday, following reports former president Rodrigo Duterte decided to cancel it due to US sanctions on Moscow. Manila agreed in November to pay $228 million for the Mi-17 helicopters, as it seeks to modernize its military hardware.

Today’s Video

WATCH: Philippines cancels Russian helicopter deal due to US sanctions

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Was it Ukrainian Special Operations forces? Did the Ukrainians operationalize their Grom SRBM? Did the USA sneak in some ATACMS along with HARM missiles to strike Saki Airbase in Russian occupied Crimea?

My bet is in that order, and in time we will find out … but there is one thing I do know for sure; this is just another reminder that this regional conflict is telling us a lot about what we need to understand about the future of war that will manifest itself in the likely big war to come in the Western Pacific.

Multiple explosions on Tuesday rocked a Russian air base in occupied Crimea — killing at least one and wounding several others, Russian authorities said.

Videos circulating on social media purported to show large explosions at a military airfield in the Saki district of Crimea, a disputed peninsula annexed by Russian forces in 2014.

Russian state media reported one death at the airfield, and at least five wounded.

“We have blasts at the airfield. All the windows are broken,” Viktoria Kazmirova, deputy head of the occupation government in Crimea, told Russian outlet TASS.

Local residents reported hearing 12 explosions coming from the base. Russian officials said the explosions were caused by the detonation of several ammunition stores.

Not unlike how the Spanish Civil War gave hints to what WWII would look like, the Russo-Ukrainian War today is showing shadows of what is to come.

From drones, to highly accurate long range precision fires by conventional ballistic and cruise missiles, to exceptionally well-trained special forces – if you have a high percentage of your air forces, supply depots, maintenance facilities, and ammunition magazines within range of your enemy – if they have the ability, they will attack them. If you concentrate your forces, you distill your operational risk to an essential vulnerability too attractive not to attack.

The Russians are lucky that the pre-war Ukrainian government and its blinkered Western advisors did not have the Ukrainians properly ready for the war that came this February. 

America and her allies do not have that luxury in the Pacific west of Wake. There is no larger power who will send us meaningful amounts of aid to cover our peace time distraction.

The People’s Republic of China’s rocket forces have our bases covered. You can safely assume that the PRC’s clandestine services are good and well set. They know what needs to be done. They have been preparing for decades and the Russo-Ukrainian War shows they were on the correct path.

If we continue to assume that we will be able to have access and use of these fixed facilities in any future conflict for more than a day or two, we are setting ourselves up for an inability to operate forward.

Yes, this is an election season, but time is short and our leaders need to act now.

We need to start to better distribute our risk, faster – especially maintenance and rearming. Otherwise, we will find ourselves – once again – pushed back east of Wake and south of New Guinea for the second time in a century in the opening months of a global war that will last years – one fate does not guarantee we will win this time. 

Photo credit NZHerald.

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Americas

General Dynamics Land Systems won a $99.8 million deal for M1 Abrams tank sight units with containers. This was a competitive acquisition with one response received. The M1A1/2 Abrams main battle tank is manufactured by General Dynamics Land Systems. Work will take place in Alabama. Estimated completion date is December 31, 2029.

The US Navy has carried out a demonstration of the MQ-8C Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations (EABO) concept during Exercise Resolute Hunter. The exercise took place at San Clemente Island from June 21 to July 1. HSC-23 flew the unmanned rotorcraft for 23 hours during this period. It had taken off from Point Mugu and flown to San Clemente before control was handed over to a Portable Mission Control Station (MCS-P) deployed there. “Fire Scout is the Navy’s only unmanned helicopter with the ability to deploy from a ship or land with ISR&T at the extended range required for future warfighting,” said Capt. Dennis Monagle, Fire Scout program manager.

Middle East & Africa

The US Army awarded Textron Systems a $9 million modification  for an Aerosonde MK4.7 aircraft. Work will be performed in Hunt Valley, Maryland, with an estimated completion date of September 27, 2023. Fiscal 2021 Foreign Military Sales to Nigeria in the full amount were obligated at the time of the award.

Europe

The Czech Republic starts negotiations with Israel to purchase three Heron drones including ground control stations, data terminals, and shipping containers. The acquisition comes as part of the Czech Army’s “Capability Building Concept,” an initiative to build up the service’s unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) capabilities for aerial reconnaissance, combat support, and ground unit protection.

Asia-Pacific

An air combat training programme for Australia’s Boeing F/A-18F Super Hornet and E/A-18G Growler aircrews has been upgraded and extended. The Australian Department of Defence (DoD) inked a new five-year, $76.4 million contract to enhance the ground-based training of pilots and personnel.

Austal has delivered its second of eight Evolved Cape Class patrol boats to the Royal Australian Navy after completion in Henderson, Western Australia. The ship was commissioned as the ADV Cape Peron under the Commonwealth of Australia. The first of its class, the ADV Cape Otway, was delivered to the navy in March after 18 months of construction. The six remaining units are still under production at the shipyard, with a scheduled completion in 2024.

Today’s Video

WATCH: Never Underestimate the F/A-18 Block III Although It’s Not a Stealth Fighter Jet

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Captain Rinn following his talk about Operation Ernest Will and the Samuel B. Roberts to Dr. Winkler’s Middle East Operation course at the USNA in 2019. 

The Naval Historical Foundation mourns the loss of Capt. Paul X. Rinn, an individual who embraced history as Surface Warfare Officer, a factor that likely contributed to the survival of his ship – the guided missile frigate Samuel B. Roberts (FFG-58) – when she hit an Iranian-laid mine on April 14, 1988 in the Persian Gulf. Captain Rinn’s embracing the heritage of the previous two ships to carry the Samuel B. Roberts name was eloquently told in Bradley ***ton’s No Higher Honor: Saving the USS Samuel B. Roberts in the Persian Gulf (Naval Institute Press 2006).
Inspired by those Sailors who crewed the destroyer escort Samuel B. Roberts (DE 413) that took on Vice Admiral Kurita’s battleline off Samar in October 1944 during the battle of Leyte Gulf, Captain Rinn’s bluejackets “did not give up the ship” in keeping with the Navy’s finest traditions.
Born in 1946 in the Bronx, Rinn entered the Navy through Officer Candidate School after attaining a degree from Marxist College. Following his commissioning in 1968, Rinn served in the destroyer Sarsfield (DD 837) that took a turn on the gun-line off South Vietnam and then served as a military advisor in Southeast Asia, managing a harrowing escape from Cambodia in 1975 as that country fell to the Khmer Rouge.
After serving a tour his department head tour in the frigate Blakely (FF 1072), Rinn spent the last years of the 70s as an exchange officer with the Canadian Navy before he attended the Naval War College and simultaneously attained an MBA from Salve Regina University.
Back to sea in 1981 as the XO of the frigate Bowen (FF 1079), Rinn continued to earn sea pay as the Chief Staff Officer of Destroyer Squadron 36 before receiving ordered to be the pre-commissioning CO of the Samuel B. Roberts. As the planking owning skipper, Rinn prepared his crew for assignment to the Persian Gulf where the U.S. Navy escorted American-flagged merchant ships during Operation Ernest Will. Rinn acted aggressively when Iranian forces challenged the shipping lanes. Rinn later came to realize the Iranians exploited that aggressiveness against him and his ship.
In retaliation for the mining of Rinn’s ship, President Reagan approved of Operation Praying Mantis. April 18, 1988 would prove to be a devastating day for the Iranian Navy.
Given his recent real-world experience Rinn led the Navy’s Surface Ship Combat Readiness and Survivability office in the Pentagon. Promoted to captain in 1990, he served as Executive Assistant to the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Surface Warfare. Rinn’s taking command of the guided missile cruiser Leyte Gulf (CG 58) in 1994 fell near the 50 th anniversary of that battle for which the ship was named. Returning to the Persian Gulf in Leyte Gulf, Rinn was the commander of the Iraqi Oil Embargo Task Force in the Red Sea and later Embargo Commander and Strike Commander in the Northern Persian Gulf. Following his tour on Leyte Gulf, Rinn served as a Special Assistant to two successive Chiefs of Naval Operations: Admirals Mike Boorda and Jay Johnson.

Retiring from the United States Navy in 1997. He took an executive vice president position at the international consulting firm Whitney, Bradley and Brown, retiring again in 2012. As an active member of the Surface Navy Association, Rinn chaired that organizations History and Recognition committee and organized the annual History Night during the annual Surface Navy Association annual symposium. Rinn himself was inducted into the Surface Warfare Hall of Fame in 2008.

Additional honors bestowed on Captain Rinn in addition to numerous military awards included receipt of the United States Congress’s 1989 National Day of Excellence Award, the 1989 Stephen Decatur Award for Operational Excellence and the 1995 U.S. Navy League John Paul Jones Award for Inspirational Leadership.
 
Captain Rinn’s funeral service will be at 1100 on Friday, 12 August, at Saint Raymond of Penafort Catholic Church in Springfield, Virginia.

The post Mourning the Loss of Captain Paul X. Rinn USN (Ret.) first appeared on Naval Historical Foundation.

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By Matthew J Garretson, Friends of Naval Aviation, Pensacola, FL (2021).

Reviewed by Ens. Sydney M. Willis, USN

Blue Angels Decades Vol: 1 is a comprehensive history of the Blue Angels, the Navy’s Flight Demonstration Squadron, through the view of primary documents in their archives. The book transforms a collection of documents into a coherent timeline of the Blue Angels’ history. Mathew Garretson, the author, lets the documents speak for themselves and only adds captions to each providing more context or stories that connect them to make a cohesive timeline. Garretson is a naval historian who focuses primarily on aviation and is the print historian for the Blue Angels association. He has published numerous articles and one other book on aviation, Vought A-7 Corsair II: Legends of Warfare. Blue Angels Decades is unique because many of the sources included have never been collected or published in the history of the Flight Demonstration Squadron. The book is an excellent broad history for the casual aviation history buff but also serves as a research source for anyone studying the Blue Angels.
The first volume of the planned eight-volume series is organized by year and covers the first ten years of the Squadron’s existence. Each year starts with a written introduction by Garretson outlining the significant events and any additional facts about that year. The Blue Angels tour card for that year’s season follows the introduction and provides an outline for that section. Every year is organized chronologically by event or related media and anecdotes between events. The organization works well for a book of so many different primary sources and makes it feel as if you are the one exploring the Blue Angels’ archives. The accomplishment of Blue Angels Decades is how Garretson is able to provide just enough captions and background to the sources to give detail and also fill in the gaps between the sources making it a cohesive timeline.
In the book you can find newspaper clippings detailing their shows, flyers, plans of maneuvers, details of each aircraft they flew, personal photos, and stories from the pilots. The book opens with a foreword by a Blue Angels alumnus, Capt. Gil Rud, USN (Ret.), adding credibility and emphasizing the influence the Blue Angels, current and former, had on this book. Then the timeline begins in 1946, detailing the beginning of the Naval Flight Demonstration Team. They were not designated as a squadron yet and did not receive their Blue Angels moniker until 1947. Some of the highlights of the book are tidbits of information about the Blue Angels that could only be found in the archive or by talking to a former pilot, such as the creation of some of their famous maneuvers, documents about when they began performing the United States Naval Academy’s “June Week,” and more solemnly the personal stories about some of the fallen Blues of the decade.
Garretson did a great job compiling so many different sources about the Blue Angels from the Naval Aviation Museum’s Blue Angels archives, his own collection, and from former Blue Angels and their families, but it is a lot. This is not a book one could sit down and read cover to cover, because to get the full effect of the documents included you might spend hours on a few pages reading the newspaper clippings and the stories and captions provided. However, the book is great for two things, casually flipping through and learning about the Blue Angels and as a resource for researching them. Blue Angels Decades brings the archives to you and would be perfect for the amateur historian or a student or academic beginning their research.
Ensign Sydney M. Willis is a recent graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy.

A lifelong pilot and aviation advocate, Garretson serves as the Managing Editor of Publications for the Air Traffic Control Association, Executive Director of the A-7 Corsair II Association, and as the Print Historian for the Blue Angels Association.

Blue Angels: Decades, 1946-1955. 1. Vol. 1. 8 vols. By Matthew J Garretson (Pensacola, FL: 2021)

The post Blue Angels: Decades, 1946-1955. 1. Vol. 1. 8 vols. first appeared on Naval Historical Foundation.

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By Ken W. Sayers, McFarland Publishing (2021).

Reviewed by Jeff Schultz

Ken Sayers’s U.S. Navy Patrol Vessels: A History and Directory from World War I to Today provides a thorough look at the multitude of patrol vessels from the mid-19th century USS Michigan to the modern Cyclone-class which have served the United States Navy in varying capacities since World War I across many oceans and waterways.
Sayers, a former USN officer who served on a Pacific Fleet destroyer, at the Pentagon, and later worked for IBM, assembled this 550-page tribute to the lesser US Navy surface combatants from the World Wars, into the Cold War conflicts and even the modern day.
Sayers argues although widespread and utterly unsung, “patrol vessels punched above their weight,” [1] and due to their overlooked contribution, deserve more attention which thankfully they now receive. This ambitious volume is divided into acknowledgements, preface, glossary, introduction, bibliography, and index. In between, there are thirty-one chapters supported by many black and white photographs organized alphabetically primarily by hull type, while the last few chapters are more varied topics like “Patrol Potpourri” and “Patrol Vessel Transfers.” Sayers follows a general pattern of providing important details about each ship type and then offering “select” or “summary” histories to allow discussion of certain examples of the various ship classes without being able to offer comments on necessarily every vessel due to the occasionally vast number, although some chapters do offer individual histories.
Owing to the many chapters covering thousands of varied surface craft below destroyer size, a handful of examples will be highlighted to show the range and detail of his analysis of these smaller but vital combatants which range alphabetically from the Patrol Air Cushion Vehicles (PACV), to chapters like the Experimental Patrol Rescue Escorts (EPCER), the Patrol Gunboat Hydrofoils (PGH), the River Gunboats (PR), the Motor Torpedo Boats (PT), the Fast Patrol Boats (PTF), and finally to the Coastal Patrol Yachts (PYc) which grace the pages of this exhaustive work.
In Chapter 3 Sayers discusses the steel-hulled 173-foot-long submarine chasers (PC) of World War II meant to relieve heavier escorts from coastal and harbor duties. A photo features PC-564, which fought in a little-known March 1945 battle against Kriegsmarine minesweepers off Granville, France in a surprise raid from the starving German-occupied Channel Islands. This vessel, although run aground, later served the US Navy as training vessel USS Chadron until finally transferred to the South Koreans in 1964 as Seoraksan. [41]
In Chapter 9 Sayers explores the Patrol Craft Fast (PCF) or “Swift” boat which proved itself in the innumerable South Vietnamese coastal and riverine settings. These off-the-shelf oil company support aluminum-hulled vessels filled the gap between the smaller Patrol Boat River (PBR) [Chapter 2] and the Asheville-class Motor Gunboats (PGM) [Chapter 19] that operated offshore. PCFs conducted patrol, troop insertion, and surveillance missions such as during Operation Market Time, among many other tasks. PCFs were among the many vessels handed over to the South Vietnamese Navy as part of Nixon’s Vietnamization program. [122-133]
In Chapter 12, Sayers forays into the River Rouge Plant’s Eagle Boats (PE) which occupy a convoluted place in World War I history as Henry Ford’s mass-produced contribution which contrary to his grandiose claims, did not arrive in time for the war, nor were that easy to produce. Some served in the 1919 Allied Intervention in North Russia, with the Coast Guard during Prohibition and in World War II. The only Eagle lost to enemy action, Eagle 56, escorted convoys and sank in the Gulf of Maine in 1945 due to a U-boat attack. [158-167]
In Chapter 15, Sayers examines the Prewar Gunboats (PG), including the USS Wilmington (PG-9), which served the US Navy almost 60 years, spanning two centuries. Starting with the Spanish-American War, the storied gunboat later spent WWI in the Pacific until 1922, then the Great Lakes in the 1930s, was renamed Dover and served as convoy escort and gunnery training vessel until war’s end. [204-205]
In Chapter 25, Sayers delves into the thirty-two Patrol Yachts (PY) used by the US Navy in the World Wars. Of particular interest is USS Isabel (PY-10), which is significant for service in both major conflicts but also because much of that service was in the Pacific Ocean and nearby waterways. In a far-reaching and outsized career Isabel fought U-boats in World War I, served as flagship of the Yangtze River Patrol, conducted a secret pre-World War II reconnaissance mission off Japanese-occupied Indochina, survived hostile air attacks, escorted convoys, nearly missed Imperial Japanese naval forces multiple times and served as a training vessel for Allied submarines operating from Fremantle, Australia. [372-375]
Lastly, in Chapter 28 “Patrol Potpourri,” Sayers profiles the Hiddensee, an ex-Volksmarine (East German) Tarantul I guided missile patrol craft, which after German reunification came under US Navy control in 1991. This interesting floating Cold War artifact served as a test platform for several years and is now a museum ship in Massachusetts for visitors to enjoy. [434-435]
Ken Sayers’s U.S. Navy Patrol Vessels: A History and Directory from World War I to Today should find a wide audience, not only among veterans, their families, and researchers alike but also naval enthusiasts. Detailed access to over 3,000 US Navy vessels spanning such a wide range of American history makes this a prized encyclopedic gem that demonstrates the importance of these overlooked “bantam warriors” [246] in an accessible and coherent manner.

Jeff Schultz teaches at a community college in northeastern Pennsylvania.

Ken W. Sayers is a former naval officer who served on board a Pacific Fleet destroyer escort and in the Pentagon on the staff of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Public Affairs). An IBM veteran, he lives in Ridgefield, Connecticut.

U.S. Navy Patrol Vessels: A History and Directory from World War I to Today. By Ken W. Sayers (Jefferson, North Carolina: 2021)

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Last Wednesday I had a few observations on Jerry Hendrix's latest article over at National Review, “The Navy’s Littoral Hubris.”

Yesterday in comments, a man familiar to readers here, former Deputy Secretary of Defense Bob Work, weighed in with some counterpoints that I feel need to be brought above the fold for your consideration.

With his permission, I've copied his comments in full.

There are the bones of one hell of a book here in six short paragraphs.  

Bob, over to you;

As he always does, my good friend Jerry writes a compelling, well written post. However, I think he misses an important point. The problems the Navy has faced has less to do about technological hubris and more with incompetence in developing cost-informed requirements and executable support processes.

Let's start with the Ford CVN. Back in the day-- around the time of the 1993 Bottom Up Review, long before the word transformation had found its way into Pentagon thinking--the Navy and Air Force were competing for the "rapid halt" mission. The thinking went that the enemy could launch an invasion of allied territory at a time of their own choosing. The job of the Joint Force was to halt the invasion as quickly as possible through intense guided munitions bombardment. The Air Force argued the best way to do this was using bombers and regionally based aircraft, which enjoyed a big advantage in sortie rates from land bases. The Navy was intent on proving they could match sortie generation rates from forward deployed carriers. To do that, they needed a new electromagnetic catapult system; an electromagnetic arresting system; new high speed low drag elevators, etc etc etc. They called for these new capabilities with no clear understanding of the cost to get them, or a sensible land-based prototyping and testing approach to work out the bugs before shipboard integration. It is true that OSD demanded that all the new technologies be incorporated into the first ship of class of the new CVNX (later Ford), rather than inserting them over the first three hulls. That caused a technology integration overload. But the original sin was setting new requirements with no clue how much it might cost to get them.

Then came the DD-21, aka DD(X), aka DDG-1000. The surface community knew that the 31-ship Spruance class was going to start decommissioning starting in 2005 (that was the plan, anyway). The community needed a plan to replace them. The community was also tired of taking a back seat behind the carrier and sub forces, a circumstance they were force to tolerate throughout the long Cold War. And it wanted to get in on the rapid halt mission. The arsenal ship was a conceptual start point. But the surface community wanted something even more exotic. So they called for a stealthy surface ship with deep magazines--missiles, or guns, or both. OSD was not the one pushing the stealth design. That was all Navy. And, in the end, the Navy designed a 15,000-ton battle cruiser with a hull that was literally too expensive to produce. The ship suffered the same technological overload at the Ford class, but the over-spec-ing of the ship was all Navy, not OSD. Again, these were sins of the Navy.

The LCS is a more complicated story. OSD told the Navy that OSD would not support their DD(X) unless there was a smaller combatant in the Navy's battle force. The Navy decided to get out of the frigate business during the 1997 QDR--again, a Navy decision. This meant the smallest surface combatant in the 21st century fleet would have a full load displacement of nearly 9,000 tons (DDG-51 Flt I). OSD didn't think the Navy could afford to build and maintain such a fleet. They were, of course, spot on...see fleet of today. The ONLY requirement OSD levied on the LCS program was that the Navy needed to be able to build three of the ships for the same cost as a DDG-51. And guess what? The Navy hit that mark. We just forget about it--and how important a metric it was.

Cost aside, the crewing, training, maintenance and deployment process decisions were all the Navy's to make. But every choice ultimately proved to be beyond the ability of the surface community to execute them. This was a case of process, not technological, overload. It appears the surface community may be finally figuring things out on the ship. But no objective review of the LCS fleet transition plan would conclude anything other than it was abysmally bungled.

The reason I think we have to remember these vignettes is we need to ask ourselves if we are about ready to repeat the process. IT DOES NOT MATTER THAT THE NAVY CHOSE A PROVEN DESIGN FOR FFGX. The Navy is cramming as many requirements and capabilities into the FFGX hull as they can. Eric Lab at CBO is convinced the Navy has once again overspec'd the ship and underestimated the costs to build it. I hope he is wrong. But if we can't build a minimum of two FFGXs for the cost of a DDG FltIII, it is not clear it is worth the cost, or the smaller fleet it will inevitably lead to.

Robert O. Work spent 27 years on active duty as a Marine artillery and MAGTF officer. He is a former Undersecretary of the Navy and Chief Executive Officer of the Center for a New American Security. He served as the Deputy Secretary of Defense alongside three Secretaries of Defense spanning both the Obama and Trump administrations.

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Americas

Lockheed Martin won a $10.4 million contract modification to convert six AGM-158B missiles to test assets and nine weapon systems simulators. Work will be performed in Orlando and is expected to be completed October 31, 2024. The AGM-158 JASSM (Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile) is an autonomous, long-range missile developed and produced by the Lockheed Martin.

Raytheon Missiles & Defense won a $57 million modification to exercise options for the Over-the-Horizon Weapon System (OTH-WS) Encanistered Missiles. OTH-WS was announced in May 2018 with a total value of $847.61 million. It is intended to provide a long range anti-ship, over-the-horizon offensive anti-surface warfare capability to USN. The system comprises an operator interface console, Naval Strike Missile and the missile launcher, the DoD announced on August 5. Work will take place in Norway, Arizona, Germany, Kentucky, Texas and Arkansas. Estimated completion will be by September 2025.

Middle East & Africa

A ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip appears to be holding. The truce followed three days of violence with Israel targeting the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and militants firing rockets into Israel. At least 44 Palestinians died in the most serious flare-up since an 11-day conflict in May 2021. On Monday, Israel began lifting its blockade of the Strip, allowing the first fuel tanks to enter.

Europe

English maritime technology firm Kraken Technology Group has  inked a memorandum of understanding with Thales for the ongoing development and systems provision for Kraken’s K50 maritime precision engagement platform. The collaboration includes the development of “advanced composite high-performance craft and hybrid powertrain solutions,” which will be built at a new engineering center. Thales will also potentially integrate a range of sensors and weapons equipment into the K50.

Asia-Pacific

China announced more military drills in the seas and airspace around Taiwan, a day after the scheduled end of exercises launched in protest against US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to the island. China’s Eastern Theatre Command said on Monday that it would conduct joint drills focusing on anti-submarine and sea assault operations – confirming the fears of some security analysts and diplomats that Beijing would continue to maintain pressure on Taiwan’s defences.

Taiwan will hold live-fire military drills this week simulating a defense of the island against a Chinese invasion, officials said Monday, as Chines carries our new exercises around its neighbor. The island’s forces will hold anti-landing exercises in the southernmost county of Pingtung on Tuesday and Thursday, the Taiwanese army said.

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WATCH: AGM-158 JASSM Air-Launched Cruise Missile

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We've been reporting on our lack of stewardship in the islands of the Western Pacific for years now, and things are getting more attention, but still do not seem to be getting much better as, step by step, the People's Republic of China keeps advancing. 

The latest news?

Chinese state-owned company is negotiating to buy a forestry planation with a deep-water port and World War II airstrip in Solomon Islands amid persistent concerns that China wants to establish a naval foothold in the South Pacific country.

A delegation from China Forestry Group Corp. visited the plantation that covers most of Kolombangar Island in 2019, asking questions about the length of the wharf and depth of the water while showing little interest in the trees, Australian Broadcasting Corp. reported on Monday.

The board of Kolombangara Forest Products Ltd., the takeover target known as KFPL which is owned by Taiwanese and Australian shareholders, wrote to the newly elected Australian government in May warning of the “risks/strategic threats” posed to Australia by such a sale, the ABC reported.

If that name does not ring a bell, let me help you out a bit.

On August 2, 1943, Moses and Koete were part of a team of eight scouts, working as indigenous guerrilla fighters, saboteurs, and spies behind enemy lines, feeding information on the movements of the Japanese back to the Allies. After witnessing an explosion at sea before dawn on August 2, they searched the atolls around Kolombangara for survivors of what they assumed to have been a shipwreck. On August 4 the scouts found the survivors, terribly dehydrated and sunburned, but alive. It transpired that a Japanese destroyer had cut an American torpedo boat in half and the surviving American crew had been swimming between atolls for days. This crew was led by a young lieutenant called John F. Kennedy.

There is a lot of American history here - not that our professional historians teach it all that much anymore as opposed to their trendy group-think causes of the quarter.

Also, what do you notice on this map?

There she is, Vella Gulf ... as in the Battle of Vella Gulf;

In Vella Gulf shortly before midnight, with the two divisions in formation 4,000 yards apart, they probed Blackett Strait; then turned north along the Kolombangara coast. Soon, radar contact was made with four Japanese destroyers carrying reinforcements for Kolombangara and closing on a course for Blackett Strait at a relative speed of nearly 50 knots. Less than ten minutes later, Division A-1 had maneuvered into position—exactly as planned—and fired 24 torpedoes. As it turned away to evade any Japanese response, Division A-2 crossed ahead of the oncoming Japanese formation to attack from a new direction.

After what seemed like an eternity, Division A-1’s torpedoes hit all four Japanese ships, blasting the first three and holing the rudder of the fourth. Division A-2 promptly opened gun and torpedo fire, completing the destruction of the three destroyers while the fourth, unseen, got away. The two divisions lingered, trying to pick up survivors but they refused rescue; Division A-2 then followed Division A-1 in retiring down the Slot, having sustained no damage or casualties.

The Battle of Vella Gulf, the U.S. Navy’s first independent destroyer action in the South Pacific, marked a turning point in American surface warfare. Coming a full year after the Guadalcanal landing, it showed that our weapons worked, that our doctrine was sound and that a surprise torpedo attack—delivered by destroyers as the primary attack unit—could be devastating to the enemy.

We like that battle because we won - where a a few months earlier the Japanese got a "W" at the Battle of Klomangara.

That is why we have a USS Vella Gulf (CG 72) and not a USS Klomangara.

Why does this matter today - these old battles?

This is all known, or should be known. The Chinese sure know it. 

Chart credit to Rhodes Cartography.

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Americas

Triumph Gear System won a $24.3 million contract action for the repair of the pylon conversion actuator used on the V-22 aircraft. The V-22 Osprey is a joint-service, medium-lift, multimission tilt-rotor aircraft developed by Boeing and Bell Helicopters. Boeing is responsible for the fuselage, landing gear, avionics, electrical and hydraulic systems, performance and flying qualities. All work will be performed in Park City, Utah, and is expected to be completed by August 2023. Naval Supply Systems Command Weapon Systems Support, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is the contracting activity.

Data from the F-15 Eagle Passive Active Warning Survivability System was analyzed by the US Air Force Operational Test and Evaluation Center Detachment 6 team and the analysis was that the system is effective in contested airspace. “EPAWSS proves that the jet can also get into the middle of a fight and cause massive issues for our adversaries,” said Capt. Max Denbin, the team’s lead test engineer. “Whether in a more passive jamming role, or as a follow-on strike package, an F-15E or EX with EPAWSS causes detrimental impacts to opposing forces decision space,” said 1st Lt. Hagan Strader, lead analyst.

Middle East & Africa

The US Navy awarded Boeing a $9.2 million contract modification, which exercises an option to procure 36 Stand-off Land Attack Missile – Expanded Response (SLAMER) data link pod assemblies for the government of Saudi Arabia. Work will take place in Indiana and Missouri. Estimated completion will be in December 2026.

Europe

The Canadian government announced on Thursday that it will send troops to train Ukrainian soldiers on how to effectively counter Russian aggression. Canadian Defence Minister Anita Anand said that up to 225 Canadian Army personnel will be deployed in the UK to provide combat training to Kyiv’s forces. The training will see Canadian troops collaborate with their counterparts from the UK, New Zealand, and the Netherlands in teaching Ukrainian soldiers over four months.

Asia-Pacific

China and Thailand will hold a joint air exercise next week and the JH-7A fighter-bomber will make its first appearance in the Falcon Strike exercise. According to Bangkok Post, the exercise will take place in Udon Thani at Wing23. It will run from August 14-24. Besides the JH-7A, there will be J-10 and KJ-500 airborne early warning aircraft participating.

The Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) will be participating in Exercise Raven Kahu from August 8-19 in New Zealand. This is a combined training exercise involving RAAF and Royal New Zealand Air Force (RNZAF). The objectives of the exercise is to enhance New Zealand’s Joint Terminal Attack Control (JTAC) and Forward Air Control (Airborne) capabilities. No. 4 Squadron will send four RAAF PC-21s and two JTAC instructors for this exercise.

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WATCH: Chinese fighter with British heart ! JH-7 with Rolls Royce turbofan engine, a unique fighter bomber

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Americas

Raytheon won a $96.2 million contract modification for maintenance & recertifications in support of the Evolved SeaSparrow Missile and NATO SeaSparrow Missile Systems programs. The SEASPARROW Missile is a radar-guided, surface-to-air missile based on the Navy and Marine Corps AIM-7 Sparrow air-to-air missile. The SEASPARROW has a cylindrical body with four mid-body wings and four tail fins. Work will take place in Arizona, Canada and Germany. Estimated completion will be by December 2022. Naval Sea Systems Command, Washington, DC, is the contracting activity.

Unionized workers at three Boeing military aircraft factories in and near St Louis, Missouri, have approved a new three-year contract, averting a looming labour strike, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) announced. The IAM said that Boeing’s latest contract offer contained better retirement benefits compared with the one its members rejected on 24 July.

Middle East & Africa

Israeli military researchers are developing a voice command system for unmanned platforms, Defense News reports. The Directorate of Defense Research and Development has been designing the Casper for use with various unmanned systems for two years. It will take “several years” before the system achieves operational readiness, the outlet wrote.

Europe

Dutch Defense has officially put the Roll-on Roll-off ship into service. The New Amsterdam is now being loaded and departed from Eemshaven to the port of Klaipeda in Lithuania. There are Dutch soldiers of the enhanced Forward Presence. On board are containers full of goods and rolling stock for the next rotation of the eFP. Commander of the Armed Forces General Onno Eichelsheim pointed out the importance of the ship on departure. Defense will lease it for the next 10 years from TransProCon, part of Swedish Orient line . In this way, guaranteed strategic sea transport is always possible. Previously, ships were occasionally rented, but this is becoming more expensive and more difficult due to increasing scarcity on the market.

Asia-Pacific

Local media reports that Tokyo intends to accelerate the development of the improved Type 12 anti-ship and deploy it earlier than planned. The new missile, which its range is increased from 200 to 900 km, will enter limited production while it undergoes testing. The previous plan was to start limited production from FY 2006, this has now been pushed up to as early as FY 2023.

China began large-scale military exercises on Thursday intended to punish Taiwan for hosting US house speaker Nancy Pelosi, raising cross-strait tensions to their highest level in decades. Chinese state broadcaster CCTV said Thursday that military maneuvers had begun in the Taiwan Strait, with the Eastern Theater Command of the People’s Liberation Army carrying out long-range, live-fire exercises and “precision strikes” on the eastern parts of the waterway.

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WATCH: RIM-7 Sea Sparrow Missile – Missile Review

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Most who have had their kids enter college in the last couple of decades - especially the last decade - have seen the sociopolitical indoctrination of our kids in the world view of the diversity industry. They don't just get informed about how racist their nation is, they are told that their college, their classes, even they themselves are "problematic."

For many who have not been in the military recently, you might think that this issue is mostly a problem at civilian liberal arts colleges and maybe it creeps in to STEM programs at public universities, but surely our nation's service academies are not wasting time injecting disunity and division in to our military's next generation of leaders?

If you think that ... I am so sorry.

As we have been told over and over, if you are not all in - an open postalizing "anti-racist" - then you are, well, 

I think two quotes from one of the Chief of Naval Operation's favorite authors will set the tone.

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Americas

Working together with the US Marine Corps, the 163rd Attack Wing has proven that the MQ-9 can be refueled on the ground while connected to an MV-22. The ground-breaking test was carried out in partnership with VMM-764 during Integrated Training Exercise 4-22 at Marine Corps Air-Ground Combat Center, Twenty-nine Palms last month. The refueling exercise was to help the Marines acquire tactics, techniques, and procedures to operate the MQ-9 in the future. The USMC has placed orders for the MQ-9.

The US Navy contracted Schuyler Line Navigation with a $10.5 million deal with reimbursable elements to support Military Sealift Command’s Sealift Program for operation and crewing for the transportation and/or prepositioning of cargo by the shallow draft tanker MT SLNC Pax. This option is the third of the current contract. The current contract includes a one-year firm period of the performance; one one-year option period; and one 11-month option period. Work will take place in the Western Pacific Ocean. Estimated completion date is June 30.

Middle East & Africa

The US State Department has approved the sale of 300 Patriot missiles to Saudi Arabia in a deal worth $3.05 billion. In a statement released by the Pentagon, the US said Riyadh requested Patriot MIM-104E Guidance Enhanced Missile-Tactical Ballistic missiles (GEM-T). The sale will include other tools and test equipment.

The State Department approved a potential sale worth $2.25 billion to the UAE for 96 Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile rounds.The Pentagon said that the UAE requested to buy THAAD missile rounds, two THAAD Launch Control Stations (LCS), and two THAAD Tactical Operations Stations (TOS). Also included are repair and return, system integration and checkout, and spare and repair parts.

Europe

The State Department has approved a $300 million Foreign Military Sale of launcher technology and support services for an anti-tank missile system, manufactured by a partnership between Raytheon and Lockheed Martin, to the British government. The UK asked to procure 513 Javelin Lightweight Command Launch Units for use in that country’s homeland defense and regional deterrence efforts, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency said Monday. The Javelin Joint Venture equipped its system with the LWCLU to help a gunner to recognize targets and send signals to the missile.

Asia-Pacific

According to Jane’s, the Philippines has scrapped a multimillion-dollar deal with Russia to acquire Mil Mi-17 heavy-lift helicopters. A source in the Philippine Air Force (PAF) confirmed the cancellation and added that the Technical Working Group of the project is now considering other platforms with similar capabilities for acquisition.

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WATCH: Mi-171 Medium Helicopter with 37 Troops Capacity | Philippine Air Force

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Why must we continue to remind everyone who will listen of the failures of the Age of Transformationalism™? Simple; we cannot afford another generation of programs lost to arrogance, ignorance, and toxic command climates that leave bad ideas and ahistorical program assumptions go unchallenged.

Futurism, offset promises, overmatch assumptions, risk devaluation, divest-to-invest – these are all attractive ideas that brief well. They seem to promise to solve so many hard problems. They offer more for less.

They seem to allow an easy path; a way to avoid hard work and compromise … and to accrue to their advocates accolades as the “it guy/gal” who has all the vision and provides all the comfortable answers.

This is an ongoing fight. The Transformationalists won the bureaucratic war two decades ago with disastrous consequences to our Navy. The second and third order effects continue to haunt us as we approach the middle of the third decade of the 21st Century and by many measures the US Navy is now the world’s 2nd largest navy as a result.

We did this to ourselves.

To fix this we need to take affirmative action to grow our fleet. How we find the money to do that is for Congress to figure out, but grow it we must. To do that we need to understand, acknowledge, and study how we got here.

Over at National Review, our friend Jerry Hendrix has a must-read article that puts where we are in context and reminds people something we will have to repeat over and over this decade – we did this to ourselves. It is perfectly titled, “The Navy’s Littoral Hubris.”

The apparent operational successes in Operation Desert Storm (1990–91) and later during the breakup of Yugoslavia (1995–2000) convinced Navy and Department of Defense leaders that future operations would occur largely in permissive environments and against low-end small-state or non-state actors. Based upon these assumptions, they set about to design a Navy optimized to operate in littoral environments. The resulting ships, the Ford-class aircraft carrier, the Zumwalt-class destroyer, and the Littoral Combat Ship, were the products of these assumptions.

Each of these ships came with an additional fault hidden in its initial design: a hubristic belief that the moment had arrived when the United States could execute a significant technological “leap ahead” in ship design on par with the development of the HMS Dreadnought in 1905, a battleship that, according to legend, rendered all other existing designs obsolete with its launching.

The Ford-class carrier, which was optimized for increased sortie generation based upon a concept in which it would conduct high-tempo flight operations near the shores where the targets of its aircraft were, was designed with five major revolutionary changes. 

...

The USS Ford, which cost nearly $15 billion, was commissioned in 2017 but, because of problems with each of its new subsystems, has yet to deploy operationally overseas.

The Zumwalt-class “land-attack destroyer” was conceived with a unique mission and a set of technical challenges of its own. 

...

Currently the plan is to remove the gun mounts and use the space to carry the Navy’s new Conventional Prompt Strike hypersonic missiles. When escalating costs and technological challenges, along with a changing security environment, rendered the ship’s “land -attack” mission moot, the decision was made to truncate the class, with only three of the originally planned 32 ships being built. This leads us to the final innovative component of the “21st century” ships (the cruiser version of the “family” was canceled before construction of the first ship began): the two Littoral Combat Ship designs.

The LCS class of ship was to be small, fast, highly maneuverable, and, most important, inexpensive when compared with the multibillion -dollar-per-hull destroyers and cruisers that made up the remainder of the Navy’s surface force. 

...

Almost immediately, problems began to accumulate. ... The Navy’s leadership, which had conceived the LCS in an era when management theory dominated councils of power, made the decision to continue building the ships and send them to sea, charging young commanders and their crews to figure out how to make them work. Unfortunately, no amount of management, or leadership, for that matter, could overcome the flaws hidden within each design.

Congenital flaws began to emerge as each class became operational, resulting in their being referred to as “Little Crappy Ships” in navalist blogs and even professional literature. These inherent flaws immediately began to directly degrade the ships’ operational readiness. 

...

These two ship classes, designed for 25-year service lives, are being recommended by the Navy’s uniformed leadership for retirement a bare ten years after their commissionings.

Here is where this horrid two decades of delusion bears its fruit;

The loss of these ships would drop the Navy’s battleforce from the 298 ships it has today down to somewhere in the 270-ship range for some time to come. ... Congress has passed a law requiring the Navy to achieve a battleforce size of 355 ships, a goal that seems more unreachable with each passing year. 

Regulars on the Front Porch remember that we made this recommendation first in 2007 - 15 years ago;

In 2020 the Navy announced that it had selected the European multi-mission-frigate design, which is currently operated by four other nations, for modification and construction in the United States. Currently ten ships are planned, but there are clear indications that the number of Constellation-class frigates (as the category has been named) will grow considerably.

As a matter of fact, let's look back at how I started that October of 2007 post. 

Let me beat that drum a little harder - license build a EuroFrigate NOW!!! Do it while we still have time - time to keep the Fleet numbers treading water and have enough shipyards open.

A revolutionary project on PPT is just that - on PPT. An evolutionary project (see pre-WWII Cruiser development and the history of Carrier development as an example) results in ships pier-side and ships underway. Good officers have bought the line over this decade that LCS with all its toys will let them cover 10x more water than the old Spru-cans did - and do it better? ADS was to be one of the keys in doing this.

We have put all our eggs in that gilded crap-basket of an LCS - thanks to Sid, we have the proof much of the oversold ASW capability increase portion has gone poof. With ADS gone we now have, well, an poorly configured, expensive, undermanned Corvette.

There it is. We were not alone ... but there is it.

Back to Jerry's NR article. He ends with about a perfect note.

While it would be good to find ways to extend the lives of and make operational the LCS platforms that have been built over the past two decades, the Navy’s new frigates, along with the advanced Virginia-class fast attack submarines, will represent the modern balanced fleet that will give national policy-makers the confidence to maintain American interests in both peace and war. The previously conceived “21st-century family of ships,” expected to include the Littoral Combat Ships, will soon be forgotten artifacts of a hubristic past.

Indeed.

If you find people who are new to the maritime side of the natsec community or are not up to speed with how we got there, get Jerry’s article in front of their eyes. It is a superb 1-stop summary.

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Americas

Lockheed Martin Space won a $25.7 million contract modification for Trident II (D5) missile production and deployed systems support. Work will be performed in Utah,Colorado, California, Florida and various places below one percent (0.2%). Work is expected to be completed July 1, 2025. The Trident II Strategic Weapon System (SWS) is deployed aboard Ohio-class (Trident) submarines and consists of: the Trident II (D5) Submarine Launched Ballistic Missile (SLBM); Reentry System; and supporting Shipboard Systems.

The Pentagon announced on August 1 that the L3Harris and Air Tractor team has won the Armed Overwatch program. Armed Overwatch will provide Special Operations Forces deployable, affordable, and sustainable crewed aircraft systems fulfilling close air support, precision strike, and armed intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, requirements in austere and permissive environments for use in irregular warfare operations in support of the National Defense Strategy. The contract will be a mixture of firm-fixed-price, cost-plus-fixed-fee, time and materials, and cost reimbursement no-fee for the procurement of up to 75 aircraft, training systems, mission planning systems, support equipment, spares, and logistics support, with a period of performance from July 2022 to July 2029, including all options.

Middle East & Africa

Rolls-Royce won an $854.3 million deal provides depot-level engine repair services for the AE2100 D3 engine on the C/KC-130 aircraft in support of the Marine Corps and the government of Kuwait. Work will take place in Canada, Portugal, Texas and Indiana. Expected completion will be in July 2027.

The Black Eagles have arrived in Egypt and the team is expected to give a flight demonstration. The South Korean aerobatic team arrived Monday at an Egyptian air base to take part in the Pyramids Air Show 2022. The 53rd Air Demonstration Group, nicknamed the Black Eagles, is the flight display team of the Republic of Korea Air Force based at Wonju, Gangwon Province.

Europe

The State Department has made a determination approving a possible Foreign Military Sale to the Government of Greece of follow-on support and sustainment of S-70 helicopters for an estimated cost of $162.07 million. The Defense Security Cooperation Agency delivered the required certification notifying Congress of this possible sale. The requested S-70 follow-on support and sustainment includes aircraft spares, repair parts, consumables, components and accessories to support S-70B/S-70B6 aircraft, existing radar and gun mount procurement.

Asia-Pacific

According to a report from Taiwan’s Up Media, the Navy has deployed its Kidd-class destroyers and Perry-class frigates to the island’s northeast corner as the country prepare for the arrival of US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her delegation. The warships will provide air defense coverage with their radars and anti-air missiles. The Ministry of National Defense also announced this morning that the military will enter an “intensified combat readiness guidance period.” The order takes effect from 0800 hrs local time on Aug. 2 and will end at 1200 hrs on the 4th. During this period, Taiwan will not increase combat readiness levels or increase its combat forces. Rather, the military will strengthen the monitoring of the Taiwan Straits and be ready to deploy troops in the shortest period of time.

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WATCH: USSOCOM Selects AT-802U Sky Warden | Winner of Armed Overwatch Program

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