535 Ship Navy - Where will we build them?

Well this isn’t the first time a White House appointee has suggested a vast increase in the number of ships in our Navy and I expect pushback from the admirals who prefer a smaller fleet of expensive capital ships.

But wow.

480 to 534 ships, when manned and unmanned platforms are accounted for

moving toward lightly manned [ships], which over time can be unmanned

Both fleets significantly expanded the logistics force, with big increases coming from smaller ships similar to offshore or oil platform support-type vessels. The fleets called for anywhere from 19 to 30 “future small logistics” ships. The CAPE and Hudon fleets increased the number of fleet oilers anywhere from 21 to 31, up from today’s 17.

The Marines and Navy have talked about the need to rethink logistics for a more distributed fight in the Pacific.

The Hudson fleet called for a significant boost to the command and support ship infrastructure from today’s 33 ships to 52 ships. CAPE called for the fleet to remain about the same. Those ships include dry cargo ships, the expeditionary fast transports, expeditionary transfer docks and expeditionary sea bases.

Where are we going to build all these?

The Pentagon is eyeing a 500-ship Navy, documents reveal?

Pie in the sky dreaming if you ask me.

Can’t afford what we have now.

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Since when did having customers who can’t afford your products ever stop the defense industry?

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Debt ballooned WAY out control after the bank bailouts of 2008 yet that was the year we signed the contract to build the $8B USS Zumwalt.

We were really F’d by December 2016, when Navy Secretary Ray Mabus signed us up for two additional $14B carriers.

And we’ve been F’d each of the 19,121 times the US Navy issued a change order on those new carriers, each of which caused the price to balloon.

Now the federal reserve printing presses are running faster than ever to maintain corporate profits during covid and we announce a 535 ship navy.

Maybe they plan on shooting our way out of the debt crisis. :man_shrugging:

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I wouldn’t get too lathered up about this, John. This is not something you can pay for via executive order.

I know. That’s what I’m afraid of.

These numbers are ridiculous but… less carriers, more cheap convoy destroyers, no more “superships”, lots more merchant ships, low cost usmc logistics delivery platform, reduced navy ship manning… I like this plan!

I’m not going to like it after the navy admirals and congress strip out the merchant and working ships then balloon the cost and capabilities of the warships.

And all that autonomous technology sounds cool but I’m an adviser at an MIT startup that has the best autonomy algorithms in the world yet nobody from the navy has called our phone… but they have already signed deals worth billions with the big defense contractors who will probably stall the project countless times them fail to deliver and end up just buying the code the next startup like us (After we have to close shop) for $0.005 on the dollar.

And what’s the point of investing billions in automation software knowing the defense contractors will end up leaking our code or outright selling it overseas?

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It used to be that the smallest warship that can remain at sea and keep a crew at operational readiness for a year is a frigate. Anything smaller would need to be unmanned but both need a fleet train for operations in the Pacific.

Of course they will strip out the stuff they don’t want, and turn this acquisition into a bloat-fest, meaning that the concept of simple, relatively small, affordable vessels will become LCS 2.0.

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