The senators’ request would increase the Navy’s budget from $8.9 billion to $14.1 billion.All the money in the world will not give us the fleet we need. When we have hulking 16,000 ton “Destroyers” and $500 million Corvettes; an extra $5.2 billion will only get you 1 SSN and 1 DDG-1000 extra a year….max.
Sixteen lawmakers wrote a letter to Rumsfeld on Friday asking him to increase the Navy’s top-line budget to provide $14 billion for ship procurement.We need to look at Danish, Dutch, German, and Spanish ships now to get us the numbers we need – and the capability gaps we lack.
“Admiral Mullen, Chief of Naval Operations, has submitted a 313-ship plan to Congress, and the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review endorsed building a larger fleet,” the lawmakers wrote. “According to the CNO, approximately $14 billion is needed annually to finance the ship construction outlined in the Navy’s long-term plan.”
“Some experts have projected that China’s Navy will outnumber the U.S. fleet by 2015, less than one decade from now,” the Senators wrote.Oh, the $14.1 billion ain’t gonna happen. Right now, the Navy doesn’t deserve it and we are in a ground war. So, what do we do. Like the chiche goes, a sign of insanity is to keep doing the same thing over and over hoping for a different result. We need change right now. We are building the wrong ships.
“Your support of the budget requirements outlined by our Navy leadership is critical if the decline of our fleet is to be reversed,” they stressed.
The irony for the Senators is that if we had more affordable hulls, we could build more ships and therefore employ more workers to build them and keep the industrial base going. All this does is send more money down the same gilded rat-hole.
The irony for the Navy is that a decade+ of PPT slides, pet projects, and non-critical adoption of buzzword soaked theories has brought us to the point that we just about have one Flag Officer per ship. Reform yourself first, then ask for more. That is what we tell our Sailors.
More darkcloud coming tomorrow on shipbuilding. Yea, it gets worse.
1 comment:
Just to share an expirience:
I digg a way to download YouTube movies. Some of are webs where you put a url from YouTube and it gives you file with strange extension and small size. Some are really complicated.
My way was to use moviesherlock (moviesherlock.com or sm like this - please ask me - will rememeber). Really simple utility, that just works, and only 1 button in software.
[url=http://download.cnet.com/3001-2140_4-75065920.html?spi=68a87b0bad1ea20e12285c5005469cde]I downloaded it from here: http://download.cnet.com/3001-2140_4-75065920.html?spi=68a87b0bad1ea20e12285c5005469cde[/url].
I downloaded even HD movies!
But it looks too easy, has no player, but just works. It downloaded ~12 concurrent movies for me and actually slows down my system. Its possible to do search in [url=http://moviesherlock.com]moviesherlock[/url] and search results differs from what you see in YouTube. Thats strange.
Who knows - Tube search are same for same text? I loves cat (Simons cat / dog).
Why doesn't youtube allows to download its movies without external tools?!! It actually sucks!
Thanks in advance!
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