The problem is you cannot afford to pay for the gear sets that the 3 MLRs need and afford the rest of what the Marine Corps needs

And the assumption we could draw weapons, from USN magazines for our fires EABOs have already been proven to be false.

Ok, so Navy amphibious ships-according to CMC-are at abysmal readiness levels, MEU schedules (at least on the west coast) are up in the air due to a lack of maintenance, and it’s all because the DoD budget is optimal or even overfunded?  

Interesting way to see the world, but typical of GD.

CNO just put a halt to expansion in the number of the LPDs citing cost, it’s only going to get worse.  

I was riding around with a Gunner from a west coast infantry battalion today.  He didn’t paint a very rosy picture.  

Which one are you?

You're the one with the rose colored glasses Hoss.

How many TRILLION have we spent on "defense" in the last 25 years since the cold war ended?

And not a month ago these motherfuckers had the unmitigated GALL to stand and say we're running out of artillery shells. ARFUCKINGTILLERY SHELLS FFS!!!

Remember in the movie 300 what Leonidas did to the messenger?

That's what should have and should still BE happening to the entire .mil procurement cadre to include the politicians who are more worried about bringing home the bacon than defending the fucking country.

Are you drinking?

We cut DoD spending after the fall of the Soviet Union / end of the Cold War.

You got your “peace dividend”, and the military has been slowly shrinking since.  It didn’t work.  Get over it.

Gators always get run hard.  They ain't sexy, but they are good at moving shit from point A to point B- that's what the military is reeeeeeealy good at.

I don't drink and I don't fall for bullshit.

You might want to look back at the total expenditures for "defense" purposes. IDGAF about "cuts". And for our purposes we won't even consider the black budget.

For the amount of $ spent there is absolutely no excuse for this country not to be armed to the teeth with no room to store more and instead all we constantly hear is the poor-mouthing from those spoiled brats and we look around to find shortages of not only big ticket items but now it's down to MANPADs, artillery pieces, spares for same and even the ammo to feed them.

All I've heard recently is how there's no way we're going to be able to replace the subs we have to maintain the force, much less grow it to meet an ever increasing Chinese threat. But we can still manage to get 4 or more to the Aussies over the same relative timeframe.

We have about 1/3 of the F-22 force that was planned for. Shipbuilding capacity is woefully inadequate and apparently getting worse.

What. The. Fuck. Happened to all the money????

We have critical reliance for many parts and pieces of our weaponry being furnished by others.

An honest audit of the DOD would have taxpayers in the streets which would be bad enough but the greed, graft and overall unpunished incompetence is gonna cost a lot of lives one these days in the not too distant future.

Mark my words.

I'll take a stab at this with MHO at the risk of oversimplification.

The "do more with less" mantra simply doesn't work with an expensive-ass service like the Navy.  Theater commanders want the options the Navy provides, but that availability comes at a very high cost; both in terms of hardware overuse due to high OPTEMPO (thus diminishing the planned service life of the asset) and Sailor time spent doing work-ups and deployments.  And before folks jump in and say that squids have it easy because they aren't on the ground, try staying underway for 9 months at a time or being extended on station because there is no relief available.  Our Navy is being asked to execute missions meant for a 4 to 500-ship Navy, not what we have today.

Since the word "no" doesn't exist when it comes to mission fulfillment, the Navy will abide regardless of readiness or material condition; especially when saying "no" will result in a CO getting relieved post haste.  Then you get shit like Navy destroyers colliding with merchant vessels during routine transits in busy waterways because of gaps in fundamental seamanship training at multiple levels across a number of rates and pay grades, and watchstander exhaustion because of said high OPTEMPO.

One more thing about the "zero defect nor mistake" mentality for Navy officers today.  There was a promising young LTJG who once grounded his ship by mistake in shoals, and his vessel sustained minor damage.  Instead of raking this LTJG over the coals, his leadership chalked it up to a newbie mistake and took another chance on him given his promise.  That LTJG was one Chester Nimitz.  Not saying that every fuck-up should be excused, but objectivity and a willingness to look at the overall potential of a person was supplanted by "going along to get along" and administrivia long ago.

I fear that we have many skilled managers at the senior officer levels adept at punching required tickets, but precious few warfighters in the mold of Nimitz, Spruance and the like; the exact type of leader we will once again need when the show starts in the Pacific again.  I really hope I'm wrong about this.


EDIT:  Nimitz was an Ensign and he was court martialled for hazarding the USS Decatur in 1907.  That's what I get for trying to use Old Man Memory.

You sound like someone standing on the outside looking in, cursing the Heavens and gnashing your teeth over something you have zero perspective of.

“Spoiled brats”, lol.  

And you sound like one of the spoiled brats.  

Yeah I was pretty surprised Jon Favreau signed off on that. Disappointing for sure.

I’m retired now, but I served under Reagan, Bush 41, Klinton, Bush 43, & Obama.  I’ve supported the Army (primarily) and other sister services under Obama, Trump, and now Biden.  

I can’t speak for the other services as an “insider”, but the USMC really took it in the ass under Klinton, Obama, and now Biden.  It’s a pattern you can’t help but notice when you know what “right” looks like during the normal years, and what the shit realties are when budgets are cut because progressive elected officials look at military spending with disdain and want to cut it first and foremost in a big way.  At that point, members of congress who vote to benefit the defense contractors in their districts are probably the only bright spot in an otherwise dreary landscape for national defense.  

I would say never but almost all the major wars 1812, Spanish American War,  WW1, WW2, and Korea the US was wholely unprepared but that was due to the philosophy at the time.  

Have a skeleton military until shit goes down then amp up.

Oh I totally agree with your assertion that the D's regularly assrape the.mil.

I've watched it since Klinton dismantled the greatest fighting force the world has ever known.

But that's only part of the problem. I hate to use the term but the "military establishment" for lack of a better term has bastardized and corrupted the procurement of all things .gov to the point that it simply can't continue.

And to give any of them an additional fucking DIME is simply good money thrown after bad. No different than the "Education" dept. (lol) or any of the myriad of bureaucracies. The difference is that when this one fails, the rest are really fucked hard and likely forever.

Marines furious over the Navy’s plan for troop-carrying ships
The budget doesn’t include money to buy an amphibious ship, and the Marines aren’t buying the Navy’s argument.



Chief of U.S. Naval Operations Admiral Michael Gilday testifies during a hearing before Senate Armed Services Committee.
“The driving issue here that drove that decision had to do with cost,” Mike Gilday said at the McAleese Defense Programs conference. | Alex Wong/Getty Images

By PAUL MCLEARY, Politico, 03/17/2023 05:34 PM EDT

By the time the Pentagon rolls out its annual budget request each spring, leaders usually have hashed out the details and present themselves — at least in public — as a united front.

Not this year.

The Defense Department this month rejected a key element of the Navy’s newest shipbuilding plan, touching off a behind-the-scenes scrum that spilled out into public view this week over the future of troop-carrying ships that are the centerpiece of the Marine Corps’ seaborne mission.

The disagreement raises questions over what direction Pentagon leadership wants to go in building new amphibious ships to ferry Marines and their equipment around the globe as the Corps pivots to countering China after two decades in the Middle East.

It’s the latest flareup in a yearslong debate over what kind of ships to build for the Marines, as policymakers try to chart a course for the future in which Beijing has quickly emerged as a military and economic rival.

The Navy on Monday announced that this year’s budget blueprint won’t include money to fund the 17th San Antonio-class amphibious ship, a $1.6 billion vessel that carries Marines and launches helicopters and watercraft.

The reason comes down to money, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Gilday said Wednesday.

“The driving issue here that drove that decision had to do with cost,” Gilday said at the McAleese Defense Programs conference, explaining that it was the Office of the Secretary of Defense’s decision to carry out a “strategic pause” in buying and constructing amphibs.

He noted the unit cost of the first three ships belonging to the ship class’s latest version — called Flight II — has gone up with each hull. “We’re moving in the wrong direction,” he said.

The same day Gilday spoke, Marine Commandant Gen. David Berger rejected the cost argument. “You could say it’s more expensive today. Well yeah, so is a gallon of milk, right, than last year. I got that. But in base dollars, I think industry is driving that price down.”

The decision to pause the ship funding is part of a wider relook at the Navy’s amphibious ship programs ordered by the Pentagon, to consider whether they align with broader policy goals. The Navy had only just submitted an amphibious plan to Congress in December, but the Pentagon ordered a redo and the Navy, to the frustration of the Marine Corps, did little to push back.

“We just did a study and came up with a number [of ships], we would like to know what has changed over the past few weeks” that requires a new look, said one Marine officer, who like others quoted for this story, was granted anonymity to speak candidly about an internal issue.

The Navy referred questions on the need for the new study to the Pentagon, and Pentagon officials did not respond to a request for comment.

SETTING A COURSE
The issue of the amphibious fleet in particular has become a cornerstone issue for the Navy as it struggles to modernize to meet China’s increasingly effective anti-ship capabilities, putting large ships such as amphibs and aircraft carriers at greater risk.

Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro, speaking at the McAleese conference, didn’t say the service is walking away from the amphibious ship program, but instead is taking the pause before putting money toward the ship and any next-generation amphibious ships, which the Marines say they desperately need.

Berger argued that the Navy is squandering a moment where the shipbuilding industry is primed to keep building the vessels. But now “we’re going to take a timeout. From my perspective, I can’t accept that when the inventory, the capacity has to be no less than 31” ships.

The number is a reference to the “bare minimum” of what the Corps says it needs to meet Pentagon tasking.

The actual number of hulls will drop to 24 this decade if Congress allows the Navy to follow through on plans it presented on Monday to begin retiring some of the oldest ships without buying replacements.

The problem has real-world consequences. The Marines have said that twice over the past year the service has been unable to deploy in emergency situations due to lack of ships. The first time came when Russia invaded Ukraine and a Marine unit couldn’t head to the region, and the second was in February when a unit couldn’t provide humanitarian assistance after the devastating earthquake in Turkey.

The halting of the ship’s production this week along with the Pentagon’s squelching of the Navy’s plans recall a similar event in 2020, when then-Defense Secretary Mark Esper publicly rejected the Navy’s annual 30-year shipbuilding plan, and personally oversaw the writing of a new document that was released months later, in the lame duck days of the Trump presidency.

This split between the Navy and Marine Corps “is partly [the Pentagon’s] fault,” according to Bryan Clark, a retired Navy officer now at the Hudson Institute.

The competing visions for the size and composition of the fleet revolve around how it will prepare to confront or deter China in the coming years.

“The problem is the large amphib requirement is based largely on peacetime presence needs, rather than warfighting scenarios,” where amphibious operations would not likely be heavily employed, Clark said. The Pentagon “has prioritized meeting needs for defending an invasion of Taiwan and other warfighting scenarios over presence needs, so the large amphibious ship requirement goes unfilled.”

While strategies remain in flux, neither the Pentagon nor the Navy has been able to offer a detailed explanation as to why the December study needed immediate rethinking.

“If you want to kill a program, you commission study after study and you study it to death,” a Senate aide said.

Leaders across the Pentagon are “really at loggerheads” on the amphibious ship issue, and “coupled with the strategic pause comments, it really gets you to a place where you can understand that the anti-amphibious coalition is in the driver’s seat on this one,” the aide continued.

PLANS HELD UP
The amphibious plan, which is being worked on by the Navy, Marines and the Pentagon’s Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation office is just one of three shipbuilding plans the Navy owes the Pentagon and Congress this year.

The annual 30-year shipbuilding plan, which is required to be submitted along with the budget, is late for the second year in a row. Navy officials say it will be released in the coming weeks, however.

The Navy came under fire last year from Capitol Hill for releasing a 30-year plan document that offered three options rather than a single plan. Under that guidance, the first option would build a 316-ship fleet by 2052, the second sketched a 327-ship Navy and the third, which the service said in the document that the industrial base is currently unable to support, would yield a 367-ship fleet. The first two options fell short of the congressionally mandated 355-ship Navy, which the service maintained as its goal since 2016 but had made no progress toward reaching.

Del Toro confirmed this week he’ll present a document with the three options again, and the new plan will also include a menu of possibilities for Congress and Pentagon leadership to consider.

The top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. Roger Wicker, said in a statement this week that “no matter the favored phrase of the day – ‘divest to invest,’ ‘strategic pause,’ ‘capability over capacity,’ – the president’s defense budget is, in practice, sinking our future fleet.” Wicker’s state of Mississippi is home to the Huntington Ingalls shipyard in Pascagoula, which builds the San Antonio-class ships.

While the new $255 billion Navy budget was the highest ever, “we’re not going to be swimming in money forever,” said Gilday, the Navy admiral. “We’ve got to start making some hard decisions.”

=================

I'm not sure how in any sceario involving the PLA Navy that the Marines and Army won't be involved in neutralizing man-made islands or moving quickly to block the three main straits supporting imports of fuel and resources to China.

The thing with amphibs are that while they are extremely useful for a variety of missions other than just amphib assaults, they simultaneously are extremely vulnerable to any surface, subsurface, or air threat.  They need the same escort group as a CVN  - there's just no getting around that, and we don't have enough escorts or CLF ships.  

They are also blindingly expensive to operate.  The LHA I was on burned 500K barrels of DFM crossing the Atlantic from Norfolk to Portsmouth.  

Our planned mission was to pick up Marines in Moorhead City, cross, put them ashore in Norway and then survive for three gun-hours before being destroyed.  We had three guns.  I guess some genius thought that since they took the guns away on  the LHDs and the new America-class LHAs, it would create a divide by zero condition and they'd be invincible.

The Navy and Air Force will quietly admit the need for ground troops but cannot openly say it because it effects their ability to pay for their programs.

Sounds about right

One in the fleet.
One in the yard.
One doing work ups that could get pulled forward into the mix in a real national emergency.

AF is moving to copy the navy model (afforgen) and has 1/4 of capacity presented, 1/4 in advanced workups available in extremis, 1/4 in local/unit training, and 1/4 reconstituting.

You could go to a blue/gold crew model to accelerate readiness out of the yard but skilled manpower is expensive.  And while it is ok for some platforms we also see how well automation, small crews and modular packages worked out with LCS.

Not really.  I have plenty of experience conducting masstacs out of USAF aircraft. Worked just fine.  And it is rehearsed frequently.
Primary Tasking doesn't mean shit when the requirement comes down. Just Cause, Northern Delay...etc.
How the USAF views them, not particular surprising.

If we had to deploy two brigades rapidly anywhere, how do you propose to do it?  Because no matter how badly the USAF hems and haws, USAF lifting Army is the only option.

Didn't have top be this way.   In fact I am very well aware of a USMC study where there was discussion of "amphibious roots" vs "forward engagement and advising" that was done years ago, and it was kind of  split where the USMC should go post OEF.  This was nobody's idea. If they want to do Fulda Gap in Central Pacific, let their lift rust away, that's their decision.

They're friends now for sure.  It has to keep putin awake at night though. He can't take Ukraine but he shares a border with China.  That oil and gas won't ever be allowed to go up in price.

Did Xi go to Moscow yet?

Since 2001 DoD budget has been about $650 bn a year.  That's about $13T.  GWOT cost about $8T -- not all DoD money but much of it was.

Zero fucks given. This country is so corrupt its beyond help. I paid my taxes time to retire. If war breaks out I'll head to a small pacific island.

Not sure who Caitlin M. Kenney is so no reaction to the story.

Normally about 1/3 of ships are being repaired/up kept, 1/3 are in training/post repair work-ups, and 1/3 are actually deployed.

So yeah, 66% of our ships aren't fully mission capable.

It's been that way the last ~50-years that I know.

Today it’s about 4-5 to make 1 instead of the old 3 to make 1.

Whatever you do, don’t try to take away SS at all to pay for increased maintenance and production.

People are too addicted to entitlements.


Seriously, we need to do away with some laws which protect the incumbent players of commercial side of ship production to help grow our industries to support the military side.

Why we aren’t making the best large ships for trade all the time while we depend on ocean trade is suicide for us when our big moats are our best defense. More shipyards that have multiple revenue streams to support both commercial and military areas has to start with cutting stupid laws hampering it and laying out harbor frontage for development of capacities.

There is some truth in what you are saying.

Military procurement is inefficient and rife with grifting from all involved.

We have lost our industrial production base which provides the base cost inputs for US sourced parts that go into .maintenance/production.

It’s a huge issue.

We need to cap/reduce entitlements and at the same time increase the efficiency of procurement/maintenance of equipment.

That can only be done if we reduce regulation, create an environment for industrial expansion, and put money into the defense industry with a bunch of strings attached for efficiency performance.

The military gets plenty of money, it's wasted on failed and unnecessary projects. And then there's fraud, waste & abuse.

The blame game starts with Congress, then heads to the Pentagon and on down.  I can speak specifically on LHDs and LHAs but don't want to dive too deep.
- There is A LOT of fraud, waste, and abuse in the DoD and federal contracting.  
- The contracting strategy is atrocious.
- There's a massive skills gap when it comes to blue collar labor at both federal and private yards.  
- There is also a significant experience and skills gap in the white collar jobs but that SHOULD be easier to recover from.  
- The work packages for amphibious ships have grown substantially in the last 20 years.  Costs and time to complete are grossly underestimated. This only compounds the labor issues.
- The benefits of recent changes in "responsibilities" are unlikely to materialize in the short term and will exacerbate other issues until they do.
- The Navy (sailors) don't do a great job maintaining their ships between availabilities.  I'm not sure if it's lack of effort, lack of knowledge, lack of time due to how much random BS training they have to do, or the combination of all 3. I suspect it's the latter and for varying reasons and in varying degrees.

Yes to all things.

But if you look at percentages of GDP shift from defense to entitlements, you will realize that priorities have changed. Along with the political scrutiny attached to that money on both sides of the aisle. Republicans and Democrats want to get paid through lobbyists, defense companies have less competition amongst themselves to keep costs down, and we lack a plethora of private shipyards because the people left keep it that way.

We are getting weaker on top of what you just said based on outputs alone.

We need an austerity party that focuses on building with what we have, reducing entitlements, opening the field for more players, and increasing efficiency.

https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/u-s-navy-readiness-as-china-builds-up-naval-force-threatens-taiwan-60-minutes-2023-03-19/

We know where the CCPs priorities are.

Growth and expansion, letting the old fend for themselves actually helps them. They wouldn’t be afraid to do it either.


Meanwhile we have a greedy political class looking at the pie, figuring ways to grift using the industries money to do less at a higher cost and the votes from addicted old people to .gov sugar for the capital to continue politicians corruption for what they do.

I give it to the commies, they know how to get stuff done(not healthily or quality) but quickly on grand scale. They subsidize their industrial capacity to a huge degree. They grift as well, but the end goal is unified to getting more powerful together. The USA  grift is to enrich themselves while weakening the USA overall

We bought tons of shit that turned out to be useless, and at one point the SECDEF was asked how many civilians (.civs and .ctr) worked for the DOD and he couldn't even guess an answer.

Lots of this is due to minimum manning, and the Navy said it would be made up with Reservists and yard maintenance, both of which only kind of happened.

In usual America fashion, politicians and planners think in couple year increments, not decade timeframes in budgeting. Then when we need things we pay a higher premium for what we do need when we need. It’s a constant cycle of that reverberating throughout the .mil systems which oscillate to extremes in critical equipment/training/maintenance.

SECNAV, CNO Pushing Plans to Decommission 11 Warships in Fiscal Year 2024
By: Mallory Shelbourne, US Naval Institute News
March 20, 2023 7:29 PM

USS Vicksburg (CG-69) getting repaired at BAE Systems Norfolk Ship Repair, Va., on April 8, 2022. Christopher P. Cavas Photo used with permission

THE PENTAGON – After unveiling a budget that wants to decommission 11 warships next year, Navy officials are appealing to the public to allow the service to move ahead with their proposal.

Officials last week reiterated the Navy’s divest-to-invest approach, which argues the service needs to shed older ships to invest in newer capabilities and platforms.

“One of the things we have to get real about, instead of talking about estimated service life, talking about actual service life,” Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Gilday said last week at the annual McAleese Conference.

“Ships need to be workable and they need to be usable. So those ships that aren’t either – usable or workable – I might be able to replace those with something that’s a little bit more agile. We may have to use them a little bit differently – get back to driving adaptability, effecting change,” he added.

It’s an argument the Navy has made before and lawmakers have rejected. In unveiling its Fiscal Year 2024 budget proposal, the Navy announced plans to retire eight ships before they reach their expected service lives: two Independence-class Littoral Combat Ships, three Whidbey Island-class dock landing ships and three Ticonderoga-class cruisers. Of those eight vessels, the service tried to decommission four of them last year: dock landing ships USS Germantown (LSD-42), USS Gunston Hall (LSD-44) and USS Tortuga (LSD-46) and cruiser USS Vicksburg (CG-69). But lawmakers ultimately blocked the service from shedding those hulls in FY 2023. The Navy is trying once again.

“The entering argument for us is our top line. And so I said earlier, we’re only going to have a navy as big as we can afford. And so then what we do is we stratify all of our platforms in terms of lethality, and that’s also informed by sustainability – what’s going to cost just to keep those ships – as well as reliability,” the CNO said.
“The friction with the Congress is capacity in the repair yards and I get that. But just having visited a repair yard with a cruiser that’s undergoing modernization as well as an older amphib, they are not making money on those ships,” Gilday added. “And they are not lethal. We’re not going to get them underway for the fight. So my proposal is let’s reinvest in something that is going to be lethal, and it is going to put us in a position of advantage against the pacing threat.”

In addition to the eight ships the Navy wants to decommission early, the service also wants to retire cruisers USS Antietam (CG-54) and USS Leyte Gulf (CG-55), and Los Angeles-class submarine USS San Juan (SSN-751). Those ships have remained in the fleet past their expected service lives.

Cruisers

USS Anzio (CG-68) pier-side at Naval Station Norfolk, Va., on April 7, 2022. USNI News Photo

For the last several budget cycles, the Navy has tried to decommission its aging Ticonderoga-class cruisers after pursuing a modernization program meant to extend the ships’ service lives past their planned 35 years.

“The cruiser mod program – we had kind of one vision how that’d play out. There were a number of factors that kind of led into how the strategy was developed. But I can tell you – the ones that are in the yard right now – the cruisers are just, I’ll say a little bit long in the tooth,” Naval Sea Systems Command chief Vice Adm. Bill Galinis said last week.

“We know how to modernize combat systems. We know how to modernize C4I systems, even the [hull, mechanical and engineering] systems. But [what] we’re seeing on the cruisers right now is really just the infrastructure of the ship. Its’ the hull. It’s the deckhouse. It’s the structural members of the ship. That’s really where the challenge is.”

As lawmakers considered the service’s proposal to decommission Vicksburg last May, the ship was 85 percent of the way through the modernization overhaul meant to extend its service life at BAE Systems Ship Repair in Norfolk, Va. Jay Stefany, the principal civilian deputy to the assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisition, at the time confirmed to lawmakers that the service spent nearly $300 million to upgrade Vicksburg. Congress rejected the service’s proposal, barring it from decommissioning the cruiser in FY 2023.

In addition to Vicksburg, the FY 2024 request wants to decommission USS Shiloh (CG-67), as outlined in the FY 2023 30-year shipbuilding plan, and moves up the decommissioning for USS Cowpens (CG-63) from FY 2026. The accelerated timeline for Cowpens would save $130.1 million across the five-year Future Years Defense Program, according to the Navy.

Without naming specific ships, Gilday said cruisers are having to pull into ports while on deployment for structural repairs.

“For cruisers as an example, I’m pulling them into Souda Bay, Crete or I’m pulling them into Djibouti during deployment to fix holes in the ship below the water line. I got water going into berthing compartments. So those are considerations as well,” the CNO said.

Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro, speaking at the same conference last week, said he’d like to divest of the aging cruisers so he can put more money into the Arleigh Burke-class Flight III destroyers.

Over the years, Navy officials have argued to Congress that the dollars they’re putting toward the Ticonderoga-class cruisers would be better spent on modernization efforts.

“That’s our challenge right now with the cruisers is just, we’re not going to get the return on investment if we were to do all the work that we need to do on those ships and make them combat relevant to the force going forward,” Galinis said at the McAleese conference.

Landing Ship Docks

USS Gunston Hall (LSD-44) enters port in Tallinn, Estonia for a scheduled port visit on Aug. 5, 2022. Estonian Navy Photo

In addition to the cruisers, the Whidbey Island-class dock landing ships – planned to have 40-year service lives – have also been at the top of the Navy’s decommissioning list the last few years.

Asked last week how much it would cost to keep Germantown, Gunston Hall, and Tortuga in the fleet, Gilday said he didn’t know the exact number but that it’s a “substantial” amount of money.

“If I take a look at what eats up our accounts – I take a look in a repair yard – I take a look at new work and growth work. On average, our new work is about 5 percent and our growth work is at about 16 percent across ships in the Navy and shipyards,” Gilday said.

“With that particular old amphibious ship, new work’s at 68 percent. So she is 4 years behind out of the shipyard. She’s costing us millions more than we need. We have to make tough decisions here. That’s money that we could pivot somewhere else,” the CNO added. He did not disclose the name of the amphibious ship.

Like Vicksburg, the Navy as of last May had spent nearly $300 million to upgrade Tortuga, which at the time was in a yard for repairs.

Gilday said he’ll have more maintenance availabilities to fund next year, and with ships waiting to go into the yards, he could use that money for other overhauls. Del Toro also pointed to the ships waiting for repairs and argued the older ships have more issues once they get to the yards.

“You want to reduce maintenance delays in the Navy to get the most bang out of the buck for the American taxpayer, well get rid of those old ships that have been sitting in shipyards for upwards of three and four years. They’re old, folks. As you open them up, you discover even more problem sets with them. They’re very close to their extended service life. You may ask why are they under their extended service life? Well, we’ve operated the living hell out of these ships, Del Toro said.

The Navy secretary said he recently saw Germantown, which has a crane aboard that has not been operable for six years. Despite efforts to repair it for several months, Del Toro said the crane is still not functioning.

“The wood deck on Germantown is starting to break through. Okay, she’s the last LSD with a wood deck in the Navy. You know how much it costs to replace that wood deck? I don’t know either, but I know it’s a lot of money. Okay, and what I will tell you is, what am I going to get out of that? Am I going to get one more year of operation at the cost of $250, $300, $400, $500 million?”

While Del Toro argued he would rather put that money toward new LPDs or the Marine Corps’ pursuit of Landing Ship Medium, the Navy has effectively ended the LPD line by pausing procurement for an indefinite amount of time.

Littoral Combat Ships

The Independence-variant littoral combat ship USS Montgomery (LCS 8) returns to homeport at Naval Base San Diego following the successful completion of a 12-month rotational deployment on June 10, 2020. US Navy photo.

While the Navy is trying to retire the fleet’s aging vessels, the service has also repeatedly asked to decommission some of the newest ships in service.

Over the last few years, the Navy has tried to decommission both the Freedom-class and Independence-class LCSs, but focused more intently on the Lockheed Martin and Fincantieri Marinette Marine-built Freedom ships because of a class-wide problem with the combining gear that marries the ship’s diesel engines with its gas turbines.

In accordance with last year’s 30-year shipbuilding plan, the FY 2024 recent budget proposal wants to decommission Independence-class Littoral Combat Ships USS Jackson (LCS-6) and USS Montgomery (LCS-8), commissioned in 2015 and 2016, respectively. Austal USA built both ships – slated to each have a 25-year service life – at its yard in Mobile, Ala.

Gilday last year argued that the Freedom-class ships could not stand up well in a potential conflict against China or Russia. Galinis last week made the same point about the Independence-class ships.

“You start looking at some of the earlier Littoral Combat Ships. Again, some of the things that we learned on the early ships of the two classes – both the Freedom and the Independence class – and then you look at the armament and the weapons, the combat capability on those ships, they just don’t support the high-end fight that we’re getting ready for right now. And so again, look at it really from a combat capability perspective and that’s what we’re kind of looking with why those ships should probably come out of service,” Galinis said.

Congress

Dry dock flooding begins for the Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser USS Vicksburg (CG-69) departure from BAE Systems Ship Repair dry dock pier on June 10, 2021. US Navy Photo

While the Navy’s proposal lays out its decommissioning plans for the year, Congress will ultimately get the final say.

Lawmakers have criticized both the Navy’s dives to invest budgeting approach and its decommissioning strategies, but have also allowed the service to retire older ships.

“Some of these ships – especially the Littoral Combat Ships – are among the newest in the fleet. The Navy claims they don’t have enough sufficient funding to maintain and operate these ships, but that’s not the case. Instead, they’ve mismanaged billions of dollars in maintenance funding. One glaring example of this is the USS Vicksburg, a cruiser up for decommissioning this year,” Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas), who now chairs the House Appropriations Committee, said at a hearing last year.
“At a time when the ship is still in its maintenance period, the Navy is proposing to scrap it. If the Navy experts expect Congress to support its vision for this fleet, it must do a much better job of managing the inventory it has. We will not stand idly by as valuable taxpayer funds are wasted.”

Of the five cruisers the Navy wanted to divest of in FY 2023, lawmakers only stopped the service from retiring Vicksburg, which had not reached its 35-year service life and was nearly finished with its modernization overhaul. The other four cruisers had either reached or surpassed their expected 35-year service lives.

Last year Congress also saved the three LSDs up for decommissioning again this year – Germantown, Gunston Hall, and Tortuga – which are now 38, 35, and 34 years old, respectively. Lawmakers also saved five Littoral Combat Ships but did not specify which ones in the FY 2023 policy bill.

Marines ask for amphibious warship in unfunded priorities list
By Megan Eckstein, Defense News,  Mar 21, 10:19 AM


USS Fort Lauderdale (LPD 28) is moored in Port Everglades, in its name-sake city Fort Lauderdale, Fla., ahead of its July 30, 2022, commissioning ceremony. (Sgt. Gavin Shelton/US Marine Corps)


WASHINGTON — The U.S. Marine Corps is asking lawmakers to compel the Navy to keep building amphibious warships, as the sea service wants to truncate San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock production and take a “strategic pause” to reconsider future amphib ships.

The Marine Corps’ fiscal 2024 unfunded priorities list, a copy of which was obtained by Defense News, asks for $1.71 billion to finish buying LPD-33, the next San Antonio ship in the class.

In last year’s FY23 budget request, the Navy asked for $1.67 billion to buy LPD-32 but also announced its plans to end the ship class there.

The Marines pushed back by including in their FY23 unfunded priorities list $250 million in advance procurement funding for LPD-33 — essentially a down payment on the next ship in the production line — which Congress gave them. This was an unusual move because ships must be funded through the Navy’s shipbuilding account, something the Marines wouldn’t formally opine on. They have now done that two years in a row, as Marine Corps leaders grow more urgent in their pleas for the Navy to refrain from decommissioning older amphibious ships without investing in their replacements.

This funding for LPD-33 is actually earlier than needed: To keep HII Ingalls Shipbuilding’s production line on track, LPD-33 should be purchased in FY25, since the ships are bought on two-year intervals. Its inclusion in the unfunded priorities list this year appears to be more about messaging than the actual need for this money right now, amid a fight over the narrative surrounding the amphibious ship production line and requirement.

Last week Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Gilday said the production line is running behind schedule and that he expects the cost of LPD-32, which is still being negotiated between the Navy and HII, to increase as much as 25% compared to a few ships ago.

Commandant of the Marine Corps General David Berger explained it differently, saying the hot production line is at peak efficiency and that the yard itself is on a good cost curve in constant-year dollars, not accounting for inflation. He added that buying the LPDs in a multiyear procurement contract, like the Navy does for all its other major ship programs, would alleviate some of the inflationary pressure.

The services and combatant commands send unfunded priorities lists to Congress to outline items they wanted to include in their budget request that didn’t make it through the revision process with the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the White House’s Office of Management and Budget.

While lawmakers don’t have to consider the lists, they’ve often been supportive of Marine Corps and Navy priorities here, especially when it comes to shipbuilding. This year, Senate Armed Services Committee ranking member Sen. Roger Wicker (R) and House Armed Services Committee seapower and projection forces subcommittee chairman Rep. Trent Kelly (R) both hail from Mississippi, where Ingalls Shipbuilding is located.

Flt 2 LPDs are really simplified and replacement for LSDs.

https://www.ar15.com/forums/General/Biden-admin-threatens-response-if-China-militarizes-Solomon-Islands/5-2548219/?page=1

Isn't that the Marines' problem, not the Navy's?

It's going to support dependents and other dumb shit.  It's time to end that poverty inducing gravy train.

The Navy has a legal mandate to provide the services or transfer the funds and overhead to do it,

The Navy prefers to keep hold of the funds and overhead as it would cost them approx 25 percent of their budget, while only providing approx 16 of the output.

Ah, thank you.

After GWI we closed bases and retired fleets of aircraft. We cut personnel.  It took DECADES to field the CV-22, F-22, F-35, KC-46, etc.  I did 3 years in AFMC, the system isn't about effective use of dollars to acquire, maintain, and sustain aircraft and equipment.  We are royally fucked and there is no peaceful way out of this clusterfuck.

Planning for how we fought the last war, using landing craft of any sort is un realistic.  
And potential conflict with Russia Iran North Korea or China would be deadly for assault from the sea.

Yeah, but walking from Camp Pendleton and Lejeune is gonna be difficult.

The tried and true teachers union argument for failing schools