Tango01  | 24 Sep 2021 9:28 p.m. PST |
"hina's increasingly aggressive declarations of territorial claims in the South China Sea and the Senkaku Islands, combined with its building up of armed artificial islands as bases from which to exert military power, are shining a spotlight on the declining size of the U.S. Navy. Of particular concern is our lack of coastal, or "littoral," naval assets. In littoral areas as elsewhere, the post–World War II U.S. naval supremacy to which we have become accustomed can no longer be simply assumed. This supremacy allowed the U.S. Navy to execute countless thousands of fire-support missions and carrier-aircraft sorties without the loss of a single surface combatant of over 1,000 tons. (The handful of warships lost to enemy action have largely been very small vessels struck by mines.) During this anomalous period, our surface warships have been able to attack land targets with near impunity from the safety of what some have described as the "sanctuary at sea." If the Cold War with the Soviets had ever gone hot, the view of the sea as a safe sanctuary likely would have been shattered. But it did not, and the opponents we faced in actual shooting wars were incapable of seriously challenging our navy. The downside of this fortunate state of affairs is that we have at least two generations of navy and civilian leadership that have operated in a world in which the rule has been: "Our ships don't get hit" — and the rare occasion that they do is viewed as the exception that proves the rule…"
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Why a troubling new report on the Navy's surface-warfare capabilities and culture matters.
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Armand
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| OSCS74 | 25 Sep 2021 6:34 a.m. PST |
Just an opinion. So the USN paid billions to a nearly useless LCS program. Why pay for a less capable ship that can barely function close to the coast when you can have a highly capable ship that can do the task better at a longer range? |
| Only Warlock | 25 Sep 2021 2:24 p.m. PST |
What a horse-puckey article, written by the "small navy" faction in the Pentagon. The Little Crappy Ships have been a disaster on deployment, incapable of performing even basic functions. |
 The Virtual Armchair General  | 25 Sep 2021 3:06 p.m. PST |
I realize the technical reasons why "small ships" may be in vogue again are totally different now, but let's not forget the "Jeune Ecole" of the late 19th/early 20th Century that said "big ships" would always succumb to the hordes of torpedo boats that were cheaper to build, etc. That might have been true for while, but was never really tested by war, and soon the pendulum swung back to the "big ships" where it seems to have remained since the Pre-Dreadnought days. So far…. TVAG |
| Tango01 | 25 Sep 2021 3:42 p.m. PST |
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| Zephyr1 | 25 Sep 2021 8:57 p.m. PST |
Gonna need big ships to get those little ships across the big ol' ocean… ;-) |
| Tango01 | 26 Sep 2021 3:32 p.m. PST |
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| Thresher01 | 26 Sep 2021 4:41 p.m. PST |
Unarmed, or virtually unarmed, unreliable naval yachts are certainly NOT going to win the next war, so………. There's a reason some of those Little Crappy Ships have already been retired, and others are/were restricted to ops only near their home port, so they could be towed back to base easily when they break down. |
| Striker | 28 Sep 2021 9:11 a.m. PST |
But Thresher01 those yachts are bringing in the moola for everyone involved. That's kind of like winning a war, right? |
| Zephyr1 | 28 Sep 2021 9:09 p.m. PST |
I'd rather take my chances on a WW2 PT boat (they were quite heavily armed for coastal patrolling ;-) than on one of those new ones… |
| Tango01 | 12 Oct 2021 10:28 p.m. PST |
Waste Of Steel: U.S. Navy Battlecruisers Were The Ultimate Paper Tiger
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examines another pre-painted building for WWII.