The HORROR! The US Navee can't affort to build all the ships and subs we don't need

replacements for the OHIO class boomers?..why do we even have boomers anymore? Who the FUCK is the enemy these are supposed to defer? Everybody else on the planet is eating our lunch economically and they don’t need to threaten us with missiles. I guess we need to be making the threats…

[B]U.S. Navy Warns It Can’t Meet Funding Needs in New 30-Year Shipbuilding Plan[/B]

By Bloomberg On July 8, 2014

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.

The Navy report provides one service’s challenges beyond the Pentagon’s current five-year funding plan in an era of declining defense spending. After 2019, the Defense Department will confront a confluence of expenses that includes the new submarines, planned full production of Lockheed Martin Corp.’s F-35 fighter jet and a new Long-Range Strike bomber.

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.

Gotta say I agree with you on this one. Apologies to my sub friends out there, maybe we dont need deep sea boomers anymore, but something more versatile for the Navy. But user friendly, not something developed by politicians…

Want a good read? It’s an eye opener.
Running Critical: The Silent War, Rickover, and General Dynamics
by Patrick Tyler

Running Critical is the thrilling behind-the-scenes drama of how two great institutions - the U.S. Navy and its largest contractor, General Dynamics - launched a nuclear submarine program that sank into one of the worst cost overrun disasters of the century. In novel-like fashion, Patrick Tyler tells how the unchecked greed and power of our country’s military-industrial managers forced the shipbuilding program aground, toppled a corporate dynasty, and shattered the lives of three men who had stood at the top of the defense establishment. (jacket copy) Less

I thought most sub captains preferred attack subs to boomers. And I’ve read no good arguments against building attack subs so… What’s the problem?

As a former sub guy myself, no apologies needed. And last time I checked, some of our boomers have been converted to launch tomahawk missiles, the same missile that is carried on several of the fast attacks. But being a former sub guy, I can say from experience that there are some major reasons why the U.S. wants to run fast attack and missile launch subs. The missile launch subs are made to run very quietly. For example, the S8G powerplant (the one used in Ohio class boats) can run on natural circulation while the S6G reactor used on Los Angeles class boats need pumps even at the lowest power levels. However, the former is much slower and not nearly as maneuverable as the latter. There’s more, but I don’t want to say too much. With the newer Seawolf and Virginia class boats, things have probably been made even quieter, though I have no experience with those boats. Point is, I say we still need boomers. The world stage is in constant flux, with players always jockeying for position. Without a uncontested leader, leadership will be contested. It’s just like the school yard when we were kids: any problem and the teacher would step in - the uncontested leader - while the rest of us battled for the scraps of respect that were left to us. Since commerce is dependent on rule of law , most of us would be out of work if the seas became an open battleground. I for one at least would not really want to work in an environment of privateers.

Your tax dollars. But who could suddenly pop up as a new player at the seas?

Nato is in such a strong position that USA could scrap the whole navy except 2-3 carrier groups (just to keep China at bay) and we would still rule the waves.

[QUOTE=TrainMan;140720]Without a uncontested leader, leadership will be contested. It’s just like the school yard when we were kids: any problem and the teacher would step in - the uncontested leader - while the rest of us battled for the scraps of respect that were left to us. Since commerce is dependent on rule of law , most of us would be out of work if the seas became an open battleground. I for one at least would not really want to work in an environment of privateers.[/QUOTE]

Money man…WE DO NOT HAVE THE MONEY ANYMORE TO BE KING SHIT IN THE WORLD!

Time to get real with our spending and to stop providing hideously overpriced welfare to General Dynamics, Northrup Grumman and Lockheed Martin buying extreme weapons to fight some phantom enemy. Our enemies are Arab Islamo fundamentalists who do not have nuclear submarines!

So I agree we shouldn’t build new ones. I’m okay with decommissioning some of the ones we already have. But I’m not okay with getting rid of the boomer altogether. Geopolitics and shift drastically in the span of 10 years and the cost to design and build up a new fleet would be much higher than maintaining the ones we have.

[QUOTE=Kraken;140723]Your tax dollars. But who could suddenly pop up as a new player at the seas?

Nato is in such a strong position that USA could scrap the whole navy except 2-3 carrier groups (just to keep China at bay) and we would still rule the waves.[/QUOTE]

I am so with you and thank you for saying NATO…time that the US wake up to accept that defense needs to be mutual and not unilateral. If we take the combined naval, air and land forces of all the NATO nations, we field a greater military that China or Russia (combined even!). There is no reason whatsoever that the US alone needs such a massive military (unless of course, we plan to fight our own NATO allies along with China and Russia!). The US military/industrial complex has become what Dwight Eisenhower warned us it would become…a machine with political power of its own which demands to be fed ever more and more money which we do have have to shovel into its gaping maw.

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

Dwight D. Eisenhower