The Navy Goes Full Salamander on the Terrible 20s

Remember how we have been saying for most of the last decade that eventually, the Navy will run out of HappyTalk Juice? That as shadows do not appear on the deck and water is not displaced pierside ... that it would have to admit what it denied?

It really is heartbreaking to see, as we wasted so many years in happy talk, rosy scenarios, and best case projections. Those who made this bed have long retired to well paying gigs in boardrooms of companies and K-Street - to be dealt with by the leaders in place now.

Not a good thing to gloat about - but .... behold.

The U.S. Navy can’t meet its funding needs for surface warships and a new class of nuclear attack submarines from 2025 to 2034, according to the service’s latest 30-year shipbuilding plan.

The congressionally required blueprint, submitted late last week and obtained by Bloomberg News, says the Navy’s plan “requires funding at an unsustainable level” unless spending on shipbuilding is increased.

The document outlines challenges facing the plan to increase the Navy fleet to 306 vessels from the current 289 while building 12 new Ohio-class submarines, part of the nation’s nuclear triad of air, land and sea weapons.

Yea, it's that bad - and a tad more.

The average cost of the Navy plan during the period when the service will be spending the most on the new submarine is $19.7 billion a year, including more than $24 billion at the peak year of fiscal 2032, according to the report.

This budget “cannot be accommodated by the Navy from existing resources -- particularly if” the Pentagon remains under congressionally mandated automatic cuts known as sequestration, the report said.

The Navy’s historical shipbuilding budget has averaged about $13 billion a year, in fiscal 2014 dollars.

“Even if the Ohio-replacement program is removed” from the Navy plan, the average shipbuilding funding required beginning in fiscal 2020 is as much as $15 billion annually, the report found.

What the heck - no one paid me for my consult almost half a decade ago. From my Feb 2010 phrase-coining post, Looking towards the "Terrible 20's";

Let's look at 2020 again. What else is happening in the 20s? Well, for one, we will have to find money to re-capitalized the SSBN fleet. I offer to you that the 20 JAN HASC SEF Subcommittee meeting has an outstanding money discussion about that challenge. Deputy SECNAV Work has also discussed this challenge in other venues, and I think he has a very firm grasp of the problem, as do most in positions to know.

You have to look at it in the broader context of the budget as well. The hangover in the 20s from this decade's drunken frenzy of spending will couple with another cohort of Baby Boomers retiring and putting stress on the budget in ways we still do not have a firm grasp on.

In 2020 - that ship built in 1990 will be at 30 years. That LCS built in 2009 will only have 9 years or so of service life (LCS is expected to only last 20-25 years) - so by the end of the 2020s, LCS will be dropping like flies.

When you consider that we will be limited this decade to LCS and DDG-51 for our non-amphib surface ship program (don't throw JHSV at me, that is just a truck - full stop - all else is spin and hope) - you have about a perfect story for the 20s of limited shipbuilding funds and a stunted fleet.

Stunted? If you continue to assume that CG(X) is dead, then you might get funding for the much needed DDG(X) follow-on for the DDG-51 class - might. That will be requested in light of the SSBN money sponge - and I don't see how with all the other needs in the 20's, we will be able to afford both a DDG(X) and a CG(X) - and there is a good chance that we will simply have to live with DDG-51 Flight III as our "new" platform through the beginning of the mid-21st Century.

I know that looking into the future is a fuzzy hobby. Heck, if you outlined in 2000 where we were in 2010 people would have said you were a nutty pessimist - so we can only see 2020 in very large, fuzzy pixels. The beginning of the mid-century (2030) is just a silly exercise in many ways - but one that needs to be done. There are known-knowns (DDG-1000 will be a rump, expensive class of ships, Ticos history, DDG-51 backbone, LCS decomm'n like flies), known-unknowns (will LCS even meet some of its promised ability and numbers, will DDG(X) be moving forward), and unknown-unknowns (Black Swan events), but still - 2020 is closer than we think, and there are economic facts that need to be looked at.

Huge challenge, one whose source is the lost decade we just came out of. You know, that "transformational" decade. The one that was to build the Fleet of the future. Well, it sure did, didn't it?

Look at what the Royal Navy is dealing with today, and it isn't a stretch to see similar challenges for ourselves. Look and learn - and perhaps we can mitigate the pain.

We'll be blogg'n about the 20's a lot down the road; let's call this an introduction to the Terrible 20's.

We have very rough seas ahead. As you will see in my post tomorrow, we still have not set the proper condition, read the night orders, or adjusted the watch bill accordingly.

Solutions? Sure, there are some - but no one is talking about them as they require sharp elbows, flexible intellect, and the ability to not be invited to the right parties - or post retirement gigs of fortune.

Hat tip CGB.

The Terrible 20s meet the Tiffany Navy

As the regulars here and over at Midrats know - we've been hitting one constant note for the last decade - the music will stop. We've gone from 78 to 45 rpm and are about to find ourselves at 33.

After all the happy-talk, the hours of PPT, the endless iterations of taking the best case scenario - and even more often; shifting the truth telling and hard decisions to many PCS cycles down the road for others to fix - after all that: we have the macro-economic pressures of the national debt on one end, the sadly predictable results of an exquisitely designed Tiffany Navy in the middle, and the looming requirements for the recapitalization of the SSBN on the other end.

Over at DefenseOne, our friend Jerry Hendrix takes those to school who have not been paying attention, and reviews the fundamentals for those who have. He knows the topic well; priorities.

For almost a decade the Navy’s annual shipbuilding budget has hovered around $14 billion in adjusted dollars within an overall budget of $160 billion. But beginning in fiscal year 2020, the Navy will request an additional $5 billion dollars per year to pay for submarines to replace the 14 Ohio-class ballistic missile “Boomer” submarines that have been performing nuclear deterrence patrols since 1982 and are set to begin retiring in 2027.

You cannot have your cake and eat it too. There really are only three choices. All have their costs, but to pick the least painful you have to set your priorities.

In a fiscally constrained era there are three options. The first is to ask President Obama and members of Congress to increase the Navy’s budget to create a separate funding scheme for the Boomers.
...
The second approach would be for the defense secretary to redistribute funds within the defense budget.
...
The third approach would be for the Navy to pay for its new submarines out of its own resources.

Which is the right choice? Watch Congress.

From here - this is where I see the the three "Jerry Courses of Action."

Ideal is COA 1, but it is the most unlikely.

The best hope is COA 2, but that would take just the right combination of a strong SECDEF and House and Senate leaders who can make hard decisions with a long view. Ahem.

Sadly, it is COA 3 that the Navy must plan for. Hope for COA 2, but be ready for COA 3. If the stars align just right, you might get COA 1 after the 2016 elections - but to play for that is folly.

The need for a replacement for the Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines is undeniable. The strategic deterrence mission, although little understood or appreciated by the American people, is, as the CNO stated, the number one priority of the Navy in that it ensures the survival of the Republic. However, the challenge of finding the money to pay for these new boats is largely self-imposed. For 10 years the Navy planned to buy a fleet of sports cars like Arleigh Burke class destroyers, even where mission requirements called for pickups, all the while ignoring that there would be a mortgage payment coming due at the same time.

The Navy needs to move quickly to reorder its priorities. If strategic deterrence is our primary mission, then funding the next submarine for that mission is the first priority. We have to pay the mortgage. It’s common sense.

Yes it is.

If we happy-talk ourselves in to planning for COA 1 or 2, then we are repeating the mindset that got us to where we are today, and reality will hit our Navy up side the head.

Let's go back to the start of our Terrible 20s discussion here relative to SSBN back in FEB 2010. Almost half a decade ago, but it still applies - to quote myself;

If you continue to assume that CG(X) is dead, then you might get funding for the much needed DDG(X) follow-on for the DDG-51 class - might. That will be requested in light of the SSBN money sponge - and I don't see how with all the other needs in the 20's, we will be able to afford both a DDG(X) and a CG(X) - and there is a good chance that we will simply have to live with DDG-51 Flight III as our "new" platform through the beginning of the mid-21st Century.

I know that looking into the future is a fuzzy hobby. Heck, if you outlined in 2000 where we were in 2010 people would have said you were a nutty pessimist - so we can only see 2020 in very large, fuzzy pixels. The beginning of the mid-century (2030) is just a silly exercise in many ways - but one that needs to be done. There are known-knowns (DDG-1000 will be a rump, expensive class of ships, Ticos history, DDG-51 backbone, LCS decomm'n like flies), known-unknowns (will LCS even meet some of its promised ability and numbers, will DDG(X) be moving forward), and unknown-unknowns (Black Swan events), but still - 2020 is closer than we think, and there are economic facts that need to be looked at.

Huge challenge, one whose source is the lost decade we just came out of. You know, that "transformational" decade. The one that was to build the Fleet of the future. Well, it sure did, didn't it?

Look at what the Royal Navy is dealing with today, and it isn't a stretch to see similar challenges for ourselves. Look and learn - and perhaps we can mitigate the pain.

We'll be blogg'n about the 20's a lot down the road; let's call this an introduction to the Terrible 20's.

We are roughly halfway to 2020 from the time the above was blogg'd. So far, so pathetically on course.

I hope that very smart people in the right places with access to levers of power are listening to Jerry and others along the same lines. We have simply pissed away half a decade plus on vanity projects, bad theory, and worse program management - all in a vacuum missing updated, meaningfully effective, and actionable vision.

Miles to go, miles to go.

Looking towards the "Terrible 20's"

I would like you to join me in a little game of looking sideways (to the UK today) and looking forward (2020s) at what I see as not chickens coming home to roost, but vultures.

Just to have a sound foundation; for source documentation we are going to use the best magazine your money can buy, The Economist, and some comments by VADM David Dorsett, USN, Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Information Dominance (N2/N6) and Director of Naval Intelligence (DNI) from last week. We'll get to him later.

First let's look at the fundamental underpinnings of our defense budget - not not strategy - MONEY.

From the latest issue of The Economist,

Mr Obama’s budget reveals a road-map to fiscal catastrophe. At no point over the coming decade will the deficit be below 3.6% of GDP; and after 2018, it starts rising again. The cuts the president has proposed are comically insufficient: a budget freeze on non-security discretionary spending, which amounts to only about 17% of the entire $3.8 trillion budget; and a toothless deficit commission (a better version has already been killed by obstructive Republicans in Congress) whose recommendations will doubtless be ignored.

Note the right side of that graph. 2020. Keep that in mind.

One thing that kept coming to mind last week in San Diego, was the goings-on in the mother country. Some of the challenges the United Kingdom is experiencing now are about a decade ahead of us, methinks - if not closer.

First is the fact that they have been under a left-of-center government for over a decade, their budget woes are roughly parallel to ours, they are starting the battle to find money to replace their SSBN fleet now, and their defense budget - starved for years as a % of GDP vs. OPTEMPO - is shredding. Hard choices, many already made in the Royal Navy, are being demanded more and more as past neglect needs to be repaired out of hide. Financially they just cannot get the money they need in competition with other programs their government has obligated itself to spend money on.

Let's look at what is happening in the United Kingdom. From The Economist;

This will cost about £1.2 billion ($1.9 billion) over the next three years. Some £280m of it will come from the Treasury, which has already provided £14 billion from its reserves to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The lion’s share, however, will be found by raiding other parts of the overstretched defence budget, with planned cuts that would realise around £1.5 billion over three years.

This amounts to more than trimming fat (by, for example, slashing the number of civil servants at the Ministry of Defence); solid muscle is to be sliced into as well. The Nimrod surveillance aircraft, one of which exploded over Afghanistan in 2006 because of a fuel leak, will be retired by March. The introduction of the new model, the Nimrod MRA4, will be delayed. This means that, at a time of greater Russian underwater activity, there will be a gap in anti-submarine surveillance to protect Britain’s own nuclear-armed subs. One of four Harrier squadrons is being lost and the rest are to be moved out of RAF Cottesmore, which will be closed. This could reduce still further training on Britain’s aircraft carriers. The loss of a minesweeper, at a time of rising tension in the Persian Gulf over Iran’s nuclear programme, was questioned by opposition MPs. Army training “not required for operations”, such as tank manoeuvres, will be reduced.

This is an unusually brave move by a defence secretary who was widely derided as second-rate when he was appointed in June, the fourth man in the job in four years. But whoever takes charge after next year’s general election will need to be braver still. Britain’s plans to buy new military equipment have long been unaffordable. Successive ministers have tried to balance the books by short-term savings (such as delaying or scaling back new equipment) that incur long-term costs. This has created a growing “bow-wave” of unfunded commitments that may finally break when an overdue Strategic Defence Review is held after the election.

Read that again. Look at those dollars you P-3/P-8 Bubbas .... because it parallels something said last week in San Diego about "..if you had to, where would you find a couple of $ billion."

VADM Dorsett responded to that question in an interesting way. As N2/N6/DNI - Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) is a critical capability for him. It is a growth industry, but he has to look at how he meets COCOM demands within a limited, and possibly stagnant-to-decreasing budget.

He started a couple of times and then backed off. He paused, thought about his words carefully, and then stated (paraphrase),

"Legacy ISR systems ..."

When you fold that into the previous discussions about unmanned ISR in the panel discussion - there can be only one area he is talking about in a USN context - P-3/EP-3 and the upcoming P-8/EP-8 program.

From a manpower and hardware requirements/budget POV, he is right, that is a large bucket of money.

That community's vulnerability to a money grab is largely their fault. As we have reviewed here over the years, the community leadership tried to hide the possibility - and then the fact - of their exceptional fatigue life problems. They created bad blood through defending a Cold War staff structure while the actual personnel and platforms at the pointy end shrunk by almost 50%.

In spite of the "transformational" press they got right after 9/11 with their overhead ISR - starting with pressure from CNO Clark to shut up about it - they avoided toot'n their horn in this area to stress ASW ---- while operationally they continued to provide overhead ISR as their major contribution. The public face vs. COCOM requirements delta was huge.

If you don't tell your story, no one will hear it. If you don't make yourself a lean operation while others are fighting and dying, you create distrust and envy among your peers. Neither buys you friends in budget fights.

In these two areas, the Maritime Patrol and Reconnaissance (MPR) community (as the P-3/EP-3-P-8/EP-8 folks are easier to describe) spent most of the decade setting the conditions for the same thing that happened to their British counterpart.

Is the "legacy" MPR fleet about to be decimated like the Nimrod? No, I don't think so. Is the P-8 buy going to shrink? Perhaps. Could P-3 squadrons be decommissioned early? Perhaps. Is that the right answer? Perhaps. Priorities - and in the 13XX world - the F-35 isn't getting any cheaper.

Let's look at 2020 again. What else is happening in the 20s? Well, for one, we will have to find money to re-capitalized the SSBN fleet. I offer to you that the 20 JAN HASC SEF Subcommittee meeting has an outstanding money discussion about that challenge. Deputy SECNAV Work has also discussed this challenge in other venues, and I think he has a very firm grasp of the problem, as do most in positions to know.

You have to look at it in the broader context of the budget as well. The hangover in the 20s from this decade's drunken frenzy of spending will couple with another cohort of Baby Boomers retiring and putting stress on the budget in ways we still do not have a firm grasp on.

In 2020 - that ship built in 1990 will be at 30 years. That LCS built in 2009 will only have 9 years or so of service life (LCS is expected to only last 20-25 years) - so by the end of the 2020s, LCS will be dropping like flies.

When you consider that we will be limited this decade to LCS and DDG-51 for our non-amphib surface ship program (don't throw JHSV at me, that is just a truck - full stop - all else is spin and hope) - you have about a perfect story for the 20s of limited shipbuilding funds and a stunted fleet.

Stunted? If you continue to assume that CG(X) is dead, then you might get funding for the much needed DDG(X) follow-on for the DDG-51 class - might. That will be requested in light of the SSBN money sponge - and I don't see how with all the other needs in the 20's, we will be able to afford both a DDG(X) and a CG(X) - and there is a good chance that we will simply have to live with DDG-51 Flight III as our "new" platform through the beginning of the mid-21st Century.

I know that looking into the future is a fuzzy hobby. Heck, if you outlined in 2000 where we were in 2010 people would have said you were a nutty pessimist - so we can only see 2020 in very large, fuzzy pixels. The beginning of the mid-century (2030) is just a silly exercise in many ways - but one that needs to be done. There are known-knowns (DDG-1000 will be a rump, expensive class of ships, Ticos history, DDG-51 backbone, LCS decomm'n like flies), known-unknowns (will LCS even meet some of its promised ability and numbers, will DDG(X) be moving forward), and unknown-unknowns (Black Swan events), but still - 2020 is closer than we think, and there are economic facts that need to be looked at.

Huge challenge, one whose source is the lost decade we just came out of. You know, that "transformational" decade. The one that was to build the Fleet of the future. Well, it sure did, didn't it?

Look at what the Royal Navy is dealing with today, and it isn't a stretch to see similar challenges for ourselves. Look and learn - and perhaps we can mitigate the pain.

We'll be blogg'n about the 20's a lot down the road; let's call this an introduction to the Terrible 20's.

The Terrible 20s Emerge from the Fog

Ah, yes, The Terrible 20s. What if you had the leadership and malaise of the Carter Administration mixed in with the budgetary pressures of the Clinton Administration ... with a little bit of Biden Administration special sauce mixed in?

We're not even a year in to the Biden Admin still at the start of the 20s...so you know this was coming.  

Via Joe Gould at DefenseNews;

House progressives will have a few chances to hold down the defense budget this week, but it’s going to be an uphill fight.

The House is set to vote this week on two Democratic amendments to cut the fiscal 2022 National Defense Authorization Act’s $740 billion top line. One would reduce it by roughly 10 percent, and another would undo a $24 billion a plus-up the House Armed Services Committee passed earlier this month.

...

“We face imminent threats from the COVID pandemic, climate change, growing economic inequality, and systemic racial and ethnic inequities [and] also, domestic terrorism,” Lee said. “It is time to shift our spending priorities to meet these priorities. I personally support much larger cuts to the Pentagon budget.”

There are a few amendments to be voted on too;

- A prohibition on funding for the Air Force’s nascent Ground Based Strategic Deterrent — a next-generation intercontinental ballistic missile and its warhead, the W87-1 — from Rep. John Garamendi, D-Calif.

- A prohibition on U.S. military forces in Syria without approval from Congress within one year, from Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y.

- A prohibition on U.S. military logistical and intelligence support for Saudi air forces conducting strikes in the Yemen civil war, from Rep. Ro Khanna. (A separate amendment from House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., would bar U.S. sustainment and maintenance support for those forces, with certain exemptions.)

- The top line-lowering amendments are a proposed 10 percent cut (excluding salaries and health care of military personnel), from Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wis., and proposed reduction of the defense authorization top line to the level requested by the president, from Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif.

The (D) have a razor thin margin in the House and odds are the cuts won't run the board - but the anti-military (D) also know their window is about to close as '22 comes up ... they will do their best.

There are some macro patterns that are on their side - some masked by the flood of fiat money to cover the response to COVID - a classic black swan event.

Just a reminder from almost a dozen years ago, let's look at what we discussed in 2010 about where we might be today; from my Feb 2010 phrase-coining post, Looking towards the "Terrible 20's";

Let's look at 2020 again. What else is happening in the 20s? Well, for one, we will have to find money to re-capitalized the SSBN fleet. I offer to you that the 20 JAN HASC SEF Subcommittee meeting has an outstanding money discussion about that challenge. Deputy SECNAV Work has also discussed this challenge in other venues, and I think he has a very firm grasp of the problem, as do most in positions to know.

You have to look at it in the broader context of the budget as well. The hangover in the 20s from this decade's drunken frenzy of spending will couple with another cohort of Baby Boomers retiring and putting stress on the budget in ways we still do not have a firm grasp on.

In 2020 - that ship built in 1990 will be at 30 years. That LCS built in 2009 will only have 9 years or so of service life (LCS is expected to only last 20-25 years) - so by the end of the 2020s, LCS will be dropping like flies.

When you consider that we will be limited this decade to LCS and DDG-51 for our non-amphib surface ship program (don't throw JHSV at me, that is just a truck - full stop - all else is spin and hope) - you have about a perfect story for the 20s of limited shipbuilding funds and a stunted fleet.

Stunted? If you continue to assume that CG(X) is dead, then you might get funding for the much needed DDG(X) follow-on for the DDG-51 class - might. That will be requested in light of the SSBN money sponge - and I don't see how with all the other needs in the 20's, we will be able to afford both a DDG(X) and a CG(X) - and there is a good chance that we will simply have to live with DDG-51 Flight III as our "new" platform through the beginning of the mid-21st Century.

I know that looking into the future is a fuzzy hobby. Heck, if you outlined in 2000 where we were in 2010 people would have said you were a nutty pessimist - so we can only see 2020 in very large, fuzzy pixels. The beginning of the mid-century (2030) is just a silly exercise in many ways - but one that needs to be done. There are known-knowns (DDG-1000 will be a rump, expensive class of ships, Ticos history, DDG-51 backbone, LCS decomm'n like flies), known-unknowns (will LCS even meet some of its promised ability and numbers, will DDG(X) be moving forward), and unknown-unknowns (Black Swan events), but still - 2020 is closer than we think, and there are economic facts that need to be looked at.

It was so clear then ... why so many people refused to see it, I have no idea.

Navalists will need to fight every battle. Every ant hill is a hill worth dying on. Keep up the fight and don't take the bait. 

The Terrible 20s is About More Than Money

We've defined the Terrible 20s here for years, that horrible mix of debt bombs, recapitalizing our SSBN fleet, and the need to replace and modernize legacy aircraft, ships and the concepts that designed them.

Sydney Freedberg Jr. over at BreakingDefense has a great overview of the challenges all services will face in the next decade, but to make our point, let's pull up the DON Air and Surface/Sub-Surface charts. Here you will see the other part of the Terrible 20's I don't think we have talked about much - the gaping intellectual shortfall.

Where are our designs to replace DDG-51? We cannot build them until the second coming. What about the replacement for the F-18 (no, the F-35 will not be that). I see the line for FA-XX and a little chat here and there, but where is the debate (we need the debate to fight the transformationalists who seem to have sold SECNAV on unmanned systems as the Unicorn of Purity)? That is just the top two, there are other's that are in dire need of new designs too.

These need to be making shadows on the ramp and displacing water in a decade ... we are late. Please don't tell me we are going to have a last minute too big to fail no plan-b train wreck again ... but it looks like we are. I have seen no evidence that we are going to change the horrible acquisition system we have that gave birth to the F-35, LCS, and DDG-1000. We will keep doing the same thing and expect a different result. 

I pray the next administration will have the luck and wisdom to bring people in with the wisdom and power to do more than be a food-trough caretaker. Sigh.

I know these things are being worked on, but we need to drag them out of the shadows. Time and money are not going to be our friends here; we have already wasted too much of both.

CNO owes Salamander a Hat Tip

One day, all articles will start with the phrase, "Salamander started discussing this over a year ago...."

The U.S. chief of naval operations is warning the government to start heading off severe budget challenges for naval forces in the 2020s, when a surge of ships built in the 1980s will “age out” at the same time when the Navy will be trying to replace its strategic submarine and nuclear aircraft carrier fleets.

“The biggest issue is the decade of the ’20s,” Navy Adm. Gary Roughead told Washington-based defense reporters March 23. “The nation is looking at a challenge to shipbuilding that I believe we need to start thinking about now.”

The only thing that would make this article better would be if the CNO started calling it the "Terrible 20s" like we did early last year on Midrats and a few times here, well over a year ago.

Bravo Zulu to Admiral Roughead in starting to beat this drum a little more. Last year he hinted at it here and there, but it has yet to stick. He needs to continue to beat it over and over and over. Stress the Terrible 20's. It is a branding and marketing thing. People like to look at decades - and as he knows better than I do - from a shipbuilding POV, 2020 is at our doorstep.

This is so incredibly important to our Navy and our Nation. THIS topic is what needs to be our #1 priority - if I may humbly offer.


Hat tip Mike.

The Terrible 20's Surface Force Gets its Just Reward

There are very few people left who will not agree that the problems we have in our surface force in 2020 are the direct result of the ill-fated Age of Transformationalism and the Tiffany Fleet it begat from LCS, DDG-1000, LPD-17, CG(X), and FORD.

LPD-17 was made functional with a lot of extra money and Sailor sweat, though still a gilded pony for plow work. LCS may follow the same path, ditto Ford. The rest speaks for themselves.

We've covered it all here the last decade and a half, so we shouldn't have to cover it all again. New folks can click the tabs to get a flavor if they so wish.

Well, like all ages, the Age of Transformationalism had its leader who set the tone and direction.

That leader was Vern Clark, Admiral, USN (Ret.).

My critique isn't personal, it is strictly business.

Though he meant well and is a great patriot, objective history tells the story. He has yet to accept responsibility for the primary and secondary effects of his decisions. If he has, please send a link, but he has not from what I have read.

I'm not sure there was a period where more money was wasted on bad programs and CONOPS. As we start to wade in to the Terrible 20s, so many of the weak spots in our surface force especially, can be traced to Clark's tenure as CNO.

So, what do we have now?

Retired Adm. Vern Clark, a former CNO and the new chairman of the Surface Navy Association board of directors. Defense Media Activity
Retired Adm. Vern Clark will assume the position of chairman of the board of directors of the Surface Navy Association (SNA) this week at the association’s annual banquet on Jan. 16.

Clark was approved by the board on Jan. 13 at the association’s annual board of directors meeting.
...
He became the 27th chief of naval Operations in 2000 and retired in 2005. He serves on boards or as a trustee of corporations, organizations and universities.

What message does this send? What does it portend?

I'll let you work that out in comments.

Whither the Super Carrier

With apologies to Jo Moore, with COVID-19 spinning out of control, last week was a good week to bury bad news.

Did you catch it? The anti-CVN forces saw their moment, and it looks like they are making their move.

Though ordered, CVN-82 is as of yet, unnamed.

Could she be the last of her kind?

The Navy is launching a deep dive into the future of its aircraft carrier fleet, Breaking Defense has learned, even as the Secretary of Defense, dissatisfied with current Navy plans, conducts his own assessment. The two studies clearly show the deepening concern over how China’s growing might and the Pentagon’s eroding budgets could affect the iconic, expensive supercarriers.

The Future Carrier 2030 Task Force, which the service plans to announce next week, will take six months to study how carriers stack up against new generations of stealthy submarines and long-range precision weapons being fielded by China and Russia.

While always willing to give great and worthy people the benefit of the doubt, "Blue Ribbon Panels" have a spotty history of objectivity. I willing to be sold - but I'm not at the moment.

Add to that nugget, a little under two weeks' earlier, the confirmed SECDEF sent a frowny-face emoji to the acting SECNAV;

Defense Secretary Mark Esper has put a stop to the the expected release of the Navy’s long-term force structure plan, telling the service on Monday to hold off and take another look, several sources confirm.

The plan, announced last year and slated to be wrapped up by Jan. 15, has run into serious headwinds. The Navy insists it can grow the fleet to 355 ships as early as 2030 despite its shipbuilding budget being cut in the recently released 2021 budget, and as officials concede there’s little hope of significant growth in the near-term. Now Esper, who has been reviewing the plan for the past two weeks, is unwilling to sign off on it.

There you go. Unless there is significant intervention at the Congressional level - things look set up.

Even without the above, we knew this was coming.

Almost exactly 10-years and one month ago, I wrote the opening post announcing the upcoming Terrible 20s. This is what I wrote in February 2010;

Let's look at 2020 again. What else is happening in the 20s? Well, for one, we will have to find money to re-capitalized the SSBN fleet. I offer to you that the 20 JAN HASC SEF Subcommittee meeting has an outstanding money discussion about that challenge. Deputy SECNAV Work has also discussed this challenge in other venues, and I think he has a very firm grasp of the problem, as do most in positions to know.

You have to look at it in the broader context of the budget as well. The hangover in the 20s from this decade's drunken frenzy of spending will couple with another cohort of Baby Boomers retiring and putting stress on the budget in ways we still do not have a firm grasp on.

In 2020 - that ship built in 1990 will be at 30 years. That LCS built in 2009 will only have 9 years or so of service life (LCS is expected to only last 20-25 years) - so by the end of the 2020s, LCS will be dropping like flies.

When you consider that we will be limited this decade to LCS and DDG-51 for our non-amphib surface ship program (don't throw JHSV at me, that is just a truck - full stop - all else is spin and hope) - you have about a perfect story for the 20s of limited shipbuilding funds and a stunted fleet.

Stunted? If you continue to assume that CG(X) is dead, then you might get funding for the much needed DDG(X) follow-on for the DDG-51 class - might. That will be requested in light of the SSBN money sponge - and I don't see how with all the other needs in the 20's, we will be able to afford both a DDG(X) and a CG(X) - and there is a good chance that we will simply have to live with DDG-51 Flight III as our "new" platform through the beginning of the mid-21st Century.

I know that looking into the future is a fuzzy hobby. Heck, if you outlined in 2000 where we were in 2010 people would have said you were a nutty pessimist - so we can only see 2020 in very large, fuzzy pixels. The beginning of the mid-century (2030) is just a silly exercise in many ways - but one that needs to be done. There are known-knowns (DDG-1000 will be a rump, expensive class of ships, Ticos history, DDG-51 backbone, LCS decomm'n like flies), known-unknowns (will LCS even meet some of its promised ability and numbers, will DDG(X) be moving forward), and unknown-unknowns (Black Swan events), but still - 2020 is closer than we think, and there are economic facts that need to be looked at.

Huge challenge, one whose source is the lost decade we just came out of. You know, that "transformational" decade. The one that was to build the Fleet of the future. Well, it sure did, didn't it?

It holds up well, I think.

What I didn't see was the POLMIL stew our Navy would find itself in.

At this critical juncture, The Pentagon is led by the Esper/Milley West Point-West Point team while the Navy's Flag Officers try to recover from damage the previous generation of leaders inflicted on our institution over a decade spending their professional capital, like, well, drunken Sailors - mostly in WESTPAC - from Malaysian fat men to exhausted and untrained bridge watches driving Japan based destroyers. 

To top things off, those who should have spent every penny left getting ready for this decade spent what little professional capital they were able to scrape together from under the couch cushions on Ottomanesque bureaucratic protect-my-legacy games.

Almost two decades of sub-optimal performance at the highest levels has us where we are; a nice, solid-but-last-man-standing CNO and an Acting SECNAV fighting hard but wrestling two weight classes up in 4A. The previous SECNAV demonstrated what some of his problem was when he was last seen endorsing a Presidential primary candidate from the other party just a few weeks before he dropped out due to a complete lack of support among, well, almost anyone.

Of course.

Of course we are where we are.

The smart money is on a better than average chance the CVN will be killed by next POM (though perhaps not for good) and what little money is captured will be spent prosealing cracks from an overstressed and underfunded maintenance and readiness hole while trying to find some magic beans to build a useful fleet not reliant on a Cold War era destroyer as we stumble to 2030.

How will we project power from the sea in 2030? You can't do that from a submarine - a platform with limited followthrough and has its own growing vulnerability issues. You can't do that from land based aircraft. I win that wargame every time. There are not enough VLS cells in Christendom to do what a CVN can do ... with a proper airwing (which we don't have).

No, if we have to go to war in 2030, the question will be, "Where are the carriers?" ... and we will send thousands of Sailors in harm's way with an underfunded legacy system bereft of upgrades, carrying an airwing saddled with three decades of bad, short term decisions made by people trying to survive the next POM, not create a Navy ready to fight and win the next peer war.

I'm really not interested in discussing CVN vulnerability ... something known in detail since WWII. All capital ships are vulnerable ... that is why RN BB sortied so little during WWII, etc ... etc ... etc ... we've discussed that in volume here through the years. New folks can look it up, won't rehash it wholesale.

No, what are you going to replace them with? Vaporware? PPT thick programs? Unmanned systems whose performance and utility assumptions are based on AI that does not exist, robust reachback that is peace-time only, and ROE that won't survive a public university law school second-year law student?

I've seen that movie. It is stale and derivative. 

No, you can't. All you can do is, like The Thing in the dog kennel, flail around for anything that can justify taking food from Mom's plate so you can feed Dad so you can tell the rest of your family that you are taking care of the parents just fine.

With apologies to Jeremiah,

1:1 How doth TACAIR sit solitary, that was full of people!
She is become as a widow, that was great among the the services!
She that was a princess among Hollywood is become tributary to grunts!
1:2 She weepeth sore in the Unfunded Priorities List, and her tears are on her EMALS;
Among all her WBB contractors she hath none to comfort her:
All her fellow Service Chiefs have dealt treacherously with her; they are become her enemies.
1:3 NAVAIR is gone into captivity because of affliction, and because of great servitude;
She dwelleth among the Mine Warfare community, she findeth no rest:
All her budgetary enemies overtook her within the POM.
1:4 The ways of PEO Aircraft Carriers do mourn, because none come to the solemn assembly;
All her hangars are desolate, her Program Managers do sigh:
Her Flag Officers are afflicted, and she herself is in Executive TAP.
1:5 Her adversaries are become the head, her enemies prosper;
For SECDEF hath afflicted her for the multitude of her transgressions:
Her JOs are gone into career transition before the selection boards.
1:6 And from the Office of the Acting SECNAV all her majesty is departed:
Her Admirals are become like harts that find no pasture,
And they are gone without strength before the CBO.

So sayeth the Book of Salamander.