Transgenerational War

The 18th anniversary of 911 is more personal than usual for me. I'm still pondering it a bit.

I'm oversharing over at USNIBlog.

If you're interested, head on over and give it a read.

Your Next Airwing

For those who didn't make it to Tailhook this year, here's a peek on the evolution of the airwing over the next decade.

Of note, you see UAS coming online and you can see the slow sunset of the Hornet.

Speaking of which ... I look forward to seeing more about the F/A-XX. We were supposed to see more this Summer, but I didn't see it anywhere. The earlier Boeing tandem cockpit concept looked very promising. Hopefully Mabus's foolish, "must be unmanned" fever dream is as dead as his maintenance legacy, but we'll see.

Remember; you can make a manned unmanned ... but the other way notsomuch.

Moar please.

Hat tip XBrad.

LCS: The Case for Skeptical Optimism

Time to see if the additional money, intellectual heft, and Sailor sweat will pay off. For the star-crossed LCS program, we are now at the "Post-Reset and Forward Deployed" stage in the bespoke "Build a lot; test little to none; hopefully learn something along the way" central core of the transformationalist mindset that birthed LCS and other programs at the dawn of this century.

As I've said since I threw in the towel on killing LCS earlier this decade, they key is to simply find the best way to make the best use of what we have showing up to the fleet ... because showing up they are.

Good people have been working very hard to make it work, and the next 12 months are so will tell us how this reset - a decade after commissioning of Hull-1 - has succeeded. 

I try to restrain my informed pessimism and internalized rage at they whole opportunity cost with the belief that internally we accepted the inadequacies of the two LCS classes and have put some of our best minds to work on the problem so we can get ... something of use.

Megan Eckstein at USNINews is doing a solid job keeping everyone up to date on progress for the last few months, and her article from last Thursday is full of all sorts of goodies.

Here are a few things that caught my eye.

In just a few years, he (VADM Richard Brown) explained, the Navy will have 66 LCS crews to support 38 LCS hulls in their deployments, training and testing activities. This compares to 68 destroyer crews today. While the LCS program won’t rival DDGs in terms of percentage of manpower – the LCS has a much smaller crew – the LCS’s much higher operational availability means it’s conceivable that as many LCSs may be on deployments as destroyers at any given time.

66 crews to support 38 ships.

Remember one of the fables used to sell LCS was how "optimal manning" would save so much money? Of course, that was exposed as folly years ago, but it still comes up now and then. Do the math yourself and you come up to the actual manpower requirements. The trade-offs aren't that sexy. Never forget - as these bad ideas continue to pop up with the, "We'll do it smarter" crowd. 

Also, is the fact that the sub-optimal LCS will be at sea as often as the fully useful in wartime DDG a feature or a bug? Do we have the maintenance support to sustain it? 

I'm a full believer that it is useful to have a good number of smaller, affordable, less capable ships for presence and low threat missions ... but LCS is not small, not all that affordable and ... if we are a nation at war do we really like that fleet balance?

I think the presence missions are great - and better to have a LCS do it or counter piracy etc than a DDG - but ... that ratio is, I would argue, a bug, not a feature. It is a natural by product of the false dawn of the "no need for FFG if you have LCS" and the trainwreck that was CG(X).

You never really know what you have until you give it to Sailors to work with ... and we are going to get a lot of data in the next year.

Here is the lineup,

USS Montgomery (LCS-8) is deployed in the Western Pacific today. A second Independence-variant hull, USS Gabrielle Giffords (LCS-10), deployed earlier this week, from San Diego to WESTPAC like its sister ship earlier this week, a Navy official confirmed to USNI News on Friday. Defense News first reported the deployment. Freedom-variant USS Detroit (LCS-7) will deploy from Mayport, Fla., later this year to U.S. Southern Command, and USS Little Rock (LCS-9) is also working up for the next deployment from Florida.

This is good, and the crews have been working hard - under a bit of a shadow - for deployment to get started.

We should all wish them well - and we should all hope that the additional time, effort, money and focus of the last few years will pay off for LCS useful to the fleet.

If this year goes well and money keeps flowing, 2020/21 deployments should build on this cycle and bring even more useful data on how to make this work.

RDML Casey Moton, Program Executive Officer for Unmanned and Small Combatants, spoke well to this guarded optimism;

“And so I come back, and things have progressed. We are 19 ships delivered; four this year, I think, two or three left to go. A big change there. … We are now firmly into executing the LCS plan, the fleet plan, in terms of both the ships getting out there in their (training and deployment) cycles, getting the crews certified. … It’s in a different mode. The ships are out there; we are now putting them to good use and doing what we always hoped.”

...and yet, we have this. It goes back to trying to make the manning construct work;

Under the Career Management System/Interactive Detailing process, Brown said, the Bureau of Naval Personnel can identify a replacement for a DDG sailor and get that new person trained up in time to report to a ship. That’s not the case for LCS, because the training pipeline sits at about 15 to 18 months, longer than the CMS/ID process.

18-months. That is what, 548 days? Keep that number handy.

Back in 2015, I coined a new measurement of time, the worldwar.

A worldwar is the length the USA was involved in WWII; 1,366 days. 548 is .4 of a worldwar.

In 40% of the time it took to fight WWII, we take to train someone to be on LCS. This is progress? This is cost effective?

Is this a process that has any flex to it in case of peer conflict? The whole manning concept here ... needs additional review. We should be able to do better.

Sea Shepherd, Public/Private Partnership and Protecting our Seas with Paul Watson - on Midrats

Even developed nations have difficulty effectively managing marine resources, enforce pollution controls, and maintain the rule of law in their territorial seas. With most of the world's coastal nations struggling to maintain authority ashore, the sea is left lawless.

From fisheries to waste disposal, bad actors are taking advantage of these localized challenges with negative impacts not just on the coastal nations, but on the global environment and integrated ecosystems.

For over four decades, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society has grown to the world’s most passionate and powerful protector of ocean life. They've expanded their expertise to include partnering with nations from Africa to Central American in a maritime public-private partnerships to bring order and proper stewardship to the already endangered maritime domain.

Our guest for the full hour this Sunday from 5-6pm Eastern will be Captain Paul Watson, the Founder, President, and Executive Director of what is commonly known as just, Sea Shepherd.

Paul is a marine wildlife conservation and environmental activist from Toronto, Canada. Watson was one of the founding members and directors of Greenpeace. In 1977, Watson left Greenpeace and founded the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. Watson has served as Master and Commander on seven different Sea Shepherd ships since 1978 and continues to lead Sea Shepherd campaigns.

Join us live if you can, but if you miss the show you can always listen to the archive at Spreaker. 

If you use iTunes, you can add Midrats to your podcast list simply by clicking the iTunes button at the main showpage - or you can just click here.

Fullbore Friday

It hasn't even been a year, but given the interest in yesterday's post ... time to reload a FbF.

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Earlier this month, there was a lot to discussion about drydocks.

How important are they in wartime? Well, all you need to do is to look at one of the great acts of WWII, via Michael Hull at Naval History magazine; The Sacrifice at Saint Nazaire;

The port contained an enormous wet and dry dock—built in peacetime for the 82,800-ton French luxury liner Normandie—that was the only facility on the Atlantic coast where the German Navy could accommodate its two biggest battleships, the 42,900-ton Tirpitz and 41,700-ton Bismarck. The Royal Navy had sunk the latter on 27 May 1941 after an epic chase, but the Tirpitz, operational since mid-January 1942 and a prime threat to the British, was lurking in the fiords of Norway.
...

The chosen plan, drawn up in strict secrecy, called for an old destroyer laden with explosives to ram the steel outer lock gate, or caisson, of the Normandie dry dock and then be scuttled. Three eight-hour fuses on board would detonate the charges. The operation was to involve a 300-mile sea voyage and a five-mile run up the Loire estuary.

The destroyer chosen for the raid was the 1,090-ton HMS Campbeltown, formerly the USS Buchanan (DD-131). She was one of the 50 four-stack, flush-deck World War I–era destroyers turned over to the Royal Navy by the Roosevelt administration in September 1940 in exchange for British bases in Bermuda, the West Indies, and Newfoundland. For her “Trojan horse” role, the decrepit, flimsy vessel was heavily modified, in part to reduce her displacement enough to allow the ship to traverse the Loire estuary’s shallows and avoid its more heavily defended channel. The destroyer’s explosive charge consisted of 24 400-pound depth charges concreted in a specially built steel compartment below her foredeck. She also would carry two assault and five demolition teams of Commandos.

The raiding force assembled in the Cornwall port of Falmouth on the craggy southwestern tip of England. Besides the centerpiece Campbeltown, the vessels comprised a motor gunboat (MGB-314), a motor torpedo boat (MTB-74), and 16 unarmored motor launches. Manned by 346 naval personnel, the boats and destroyer were to carry 265 Commandos armed Bren light machine guns, Thompson submachine guns, hand grenades, and explosive charges. The vessels would be escorted by the Hunt-class destroyers Atherstone and Tynedale, which would remain outside the estuary, and additional support was to be furnished by the destroyers Cleveland and Brocklesby.
...
Shortly after 0100 on 28 March, Mecke received a warning that unlighted ships were sailing up the Loire estuary leading into the Saint-Nazaire harbor. Rushing to an observation post, he squinted through a telescope and discerned the dark shapes of about 15 vessels. Captain Mecke called for searchlights to be switched on, and Ryder’s flotilla was outlined brightly.

The Kriegsmarine officer was hesitant to give an order to open fire because one of the intruding vessels, the Campbeltown, appeared to be German, but the others did not. Yet all were flying German flags. He ordered a shell to be fired across the bow of the leading craft, and moments later the British fired a green flare that split into three red stars, the German recognition signal.

Flanked by enemy guns on both sides of the Loire, the flotilla moved carefully between mudflats and sandbanks, churning steadily onward. It was less than a mile from the Normandie dock at 0130 when the German batteries opened up with a deafening roar. While flotilla guns fired back, the German flags were rapidly lowered and replaced by Royal Navy ensigns. The British deceit had paid off, and the raiders had managed to penetrate the enemy lair before being identified as hostile.
...
Standing calmly on the bridge while tracer fire hissed around him, Commander Beattie could see the dock clearly outlined by the searchlights’ glare. “Full speed ahead!” he shouted. “Prepare for ramming!” Rocked by the shells, his vessel lurched toward the massive dock gate as flame, smoke, and flying debris filled the air. Closer and closer went the Campbeltown at 15 knots until, with a grinding crunch, she slammed into the gate dead center. Ten yards of her bow was sheared open like a tin can, but she came to rest with her forecastle hanging over the heavily damaged caisson.

The jarring impact knocked the seamen and Commandos down. The unruffled Beattie scrambled to his feet and remarked to the officers on the bridge, “All right, here we are.” Glancing at his wristwatch, which read 0134, he added with a hint of disappointment, “Four minutes late.” The Commandos swiftly clambered down her sides. The gallant Campbeltown had fulfilled her sacrificial duty, and her crew disembarked after the Commandos as Saint-Nazaire Harbor became an inferno of exploding shells, smoke, and tracer streams.
...
Within half an hour of the Campbeltown’s ramming, they had destroyed the dry dock’s machinery and mechanisms. They also disabled the winding gear of the gate, but their efforts to attack the U-boat pens were unsuccessful.

Pandemonium in Saint-Nazaire
With their mission completed, the Commandos regrouped to take a breather and tend their wounded. Under increasing enemy fire, Lieutenant Colonel Newman and the 150 weary men he had left took up a defensive position behind some trucks near the embarkation point, the port’s Old Mole. They waited patiently for the motor launches to return, but none arrived. As the minutes passed, it became all too clear that they were marooned in Saint-Nazaire and surrounded by thousands of Germans. The Commandos were not surprised; they had been warned that their chances of getting away were slim at best.

Newman ordered his men to split into small groups and try to slip or fight their way to the countryside and then work their way south to neutral Spain or Portugal.

...but there is a lot more to the story from there. Read the whole thing.

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UPDATE: Superb tip by Bill in comments. You simply must watch Jeremy Clarkson's special on the raid.

Remember how we laughed at the Russians ....

...when their only carrier-capable dry dock ... had an oopsie?

Well, I think that was the only one ... well - don't laugh too hard.

You know how long we've known the dimensions of the FORD Class CVN? In an unfortunate time to get enough eyes, Ben Werner had an important article out on the 30th that missed my scan earlier with the holiday and hurricane;

Only one of the Navy’s 18 dry docks used for maintaining the nuclear-powered carrier fleet can support a Ford-class carrier, Navy officials told USNI News.

Dry Dock 8 at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard can handle a Ford-class carrier, but only after a temporary cooling water systems is set up. A permanent cooling water system and other upgrades to Dry Dock 8 are scheduled to occur before USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78) enters its first planned dry dock availability, Anna Taylor, a Naval Sea Systems Command spokeswoman, told USNI News in an email.

The Navy also plans to upgrade a West Coast dry dock to handle the future USS John F. Kennedy (CVN-79), Taylor added.

So, a single source of failure now, and maybe two later? Hope a war doesn't break out.

Here is the zinger; I know the EDO types have been beating this drum in the background ... but who was the one who kept sending the power-down signal until their PQS cycle was complete?

“The Navy has taken a hard turn on how do you do readiness in a more efficient way, and that’s being led from the secretary’s office,” Petters said. “We’ve talked about readiness in my career for a long time. This is a no-kidding effort to go get it sorted out.”

So, if this is a "no-kidding effort" - then when was the kidding effort?


Maybe no in the USN studies the St Nazaire Raid any more - but I bet the Chinese do.

Hat tip DJ.

China: an Autocratic STEMocracy

We know the USN has a pro-STEM bias.

It that a net positive, negative, or a wash?

I have some ideas bouncing around USNIBlog. Come check it out.

Hat tip Gordon.