Reduction in Military Reduces Navy Size

There's no such thing as a "handy base" Troy. We can refuel in route and be home for supper. Many pilots now brag about this, which has been a relatively common occurrence in the last decade. Surface ships and the majority of aircraft currently in inventory are just political boondoggles to justify some warped sense of era's long since past. The F-15 is a great ship, but now getting phased out, never having been beaten. The HMS Sheffield was state of the art, the paint hadn't even completely dried when a single Exoset (which didn't even explode!) proved what happens when not so high tech meets over confident high tech.

Repeatedly, throughout history armies and navies have had to learn and relearn these lessons. Now air forces are involved, but the overly regimented boneheads that run them, can't get over themselves enough to see past their political aspirations or friends, let alone common sense.

Very shortly folks, several counties will be able to stand off, nearly completely and rain ordnance from great distances, with little fear of conventional retaliation, hence the dramatic rise in terrorism, by those that can't fight on an equal footing. This isn't new stuff folks. In fact it's just this very mentality, that permitted the USA to defeat the British empire in the late 18th century! We were the insurgents, the rebels, the low life rabble rousing bums, that used terror tactics and unconventional, seemingly insidious techniques to win our independence.

In short, all military of the world suffer from a two faced dogma. On one side are the creative and inventive geeks, coming up with new techniques and weponology, while on the other hand are the rigidly opinionated, unwaveringly suborn leaders, left over from the last great battles. These leaders don't pay much attention to the geeks, unless they're desperately in need. The geeks haven't the remotest chance of leadership, yet are the only ones that know what's likely to smack them in the face, next "go around". Until we change the way the military functions, it'll always need to kill a few thousand boys, to learn a lesson that could have been easily avoided, by pay attention to the geeks that invented the latest and greatest gear.

BTW, WW II class aircraft carriers burned like gas soaked trash cans., Just ask any WW II vet. They burned so easily and so completely that special tactics had to be employ and revised several times during the war. So, bad was this trait, that radar equipped destroyers where used as screens in 50 and 75 miles circles around the carriers! When you need a 250+ square mile protective zone, around your carriers and they still managed to get sunk, you can pretty much call them a match waiting for a spark.

 

Time will tell...

-Tom

 

We've been fighting in Afghanistan for ten years now, and we're still there. We're just now leaving Iraq, after eight years.

Repairs during WWII didn't necessarily take months. Off the top of my head I can think of two examples, but I'm sure if I researched the subject I could do better:

On May 22, 1942 the carrier Yorktown arrived in Pearl harbor and dry docked, after the Battle of the Coral Sea where a 551 lb armor-piercing bomb had penetrated her deck and exploded deep inside, doing significant damage and starting multiple fires. The damage was so severe that the Japanese listed her as a confirmed kill, assuming she would sink within a few hours.

1400 workers swarmed the ship, and 48 hours later she left to rendezvous with Hornet and Enterprise for the Battle of Midway. She was jury-rigged and ragged-looking, but fully functional.

In 1945 off Iwo Jima, the carrier Saratoga took five bomb hits in three minutes. Her flight deck forward was wrecked, her starboard side was holed twice and large fires were started in her hangar deck. Another attack two hours later scored an additional bomb hit.

She arrived at Bremerton on March 15th, and left shipshape and Bristol fashion all the way down to the paint job, on May 22nd. Had she been needed, I'm sure they could have spun her in and out like they did the Yorktown....

Paul, any war vessel runs a risk of being sunk, just as any soldier stands a chance of getting shot. That doesn't necessarily mean they're obsolete.

Carriers are ranged weapons. Ranged weapons typically aren't much good for defense... needing to deploy a screen of destroyers to protect carriers is no more irrational than deploying swordsmen and pikemen to protect archers.

And as of today and for the near future at least, planes operating from the States can't provide a fraction of the sheer tonnage of bombs per day that a carrier can. Nor can they provide close air support for ground troops like an A-10 Warthog....

 

Explain to me again why the US currently spends a large share of GDP on the military than during the cold war, and why the US spends almost 50% of the worlds military budget?

Remember it wasn't pre-war expenditures that won WWII it was out manufacturing capability, and speed of pushing new products to market. The very infastructure we are gutting to fund a bloated military today.

 

The A-10 isn't carrier based. You all (most) are using the exact mentality, of the stuffy old men, that run the various branches of the military. Carriers have notoriously poor survivability, which is well established and frankly not debatable. Yorktown was a floating wreck as it neared Midway. Was it not for the lessons they learned the week previous, it wouldn't have survived as it did. It was barely able to provide flight operations.

It's no longer a matter of shear tonnage. We use one bomb, hit three or four targets with it (yep, multiple vehicles) with such a level of precision, that no more ordnance is necessary. We can target with such accuracy, that we see the guy's lips word "oh ****" just before the screen goes blank, confirming the hit. It's just going to get more precise and devastating folks, not less. In WW II we were lucky to hit the right town, now we can pick who's nipple to pierce.

I can see a day in the not too distant future, where autonomous drones of considerable size and payload, roam around hostile areas, looking for targets of opportunity, striking when possible. This will naturally force a change in tactics, both in small scale operations such as hunting down terrorists or assembling invasion forces. The drones against drones technological race will begin, maybe even the "drone wars". Where people literally sit around LCD monitors with lists of loses and successes, no blood, just broken up hardware. This may sound like science fiction, but we're much closer then you can realize. 100 years from now, war may literally be just for the machines, with each side taking score. He who has the most effective set of drones wins.

I'll be back . . .

 

That's what Obama supports, so Hoyt will hate it . . . .

Cheers
Angel

 

He'll just drone on and on about the Obarmy Army.

 

robotics will also change everything. Armored personal enhanced performance suits are about a split second away from the battle field as is invisibility cloaks and hand held anti air and sea guided munitions.

Technology is leaping forward like crazy and any attempt that fails to alter strategies to match the technologies is doomed to failure. More, smaller, more versatile and deadly systems are the thing of the future

Troy, what I was saying by it all being over in a few weeks is that the war is effectively accomplished in a very short period of time. Although the occupation might not go so well. We steam rolled both Iraq and Afghanistan in about a split second. Then went on to do a pis poor job of securing the captured areas.

 

The American military budget is bigger than that of the 10 countries next largest. Enough said, the 'military industrial complex' has the joint by the balls.

 

Concerning the "reduction " in spending, the BBC defense corrospondant reported that the cut represents seven percent of the defense budget, Big deal.

 

Obama made lots of his visit to Australia and I am sure now, that he was planning things way back then... His Australian presentation on TV yesterday indicated that the Navy would be maintained and possibly enlarged/modified to ensure the troops were more flexible and capable of filling multiple roles with far better training in the style of Australian troops...

My interpretation is that the army and air-force arms may shrink somewhat or merge within Naval operations... Many operations will be done by drones or other "unmanned" aircraft, combat and manned aircraft on carriers and troops delivered by boats to a beach-head or by large aircraft to nearby airports or paratroops...

 

You're right; Warthogs don't operate off carriers. But Harrier II's do, and they've been used extensively in the Gulf War, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Again, don't get me wrong: I'm not anti-technology. But I think it's a bit early to be relegating carriers to the dustbins of history.... they'll continue to be useful for the foreseeable future.

 

Or course you need carriers. Fighter Aircraft cant circle the globe looking for bad guys, they need to stop, grab a bite to eat and fill up the tanks.

. If you loose all your friends like Pakistan and access to bases, the floating island aircaft carrier becomes your base.

 

If you follow a logical course, which is asking a lot from a politician run set of programs, the separate branches should merge into one single, unified force. The duplication, equipment and redundancy alone will justify the costs. A USDF would still have air, sea and land arms, but a unified command structure, standardized equipment and uniform requirements, plus a likely increase in specialization units.

This combined with a much more mechanized approach, will dramatically reduce the personal and equipment required on the line. This is the historical way of things and it's happened many times previously, throughout time. There once was a need for a half a million men, to engage a half a million men on the battle field, but we aren't the Visigoths and a drone strike can wipe out an enemy's leadership, from the comfort of the A/C'd Nevada Winnebago.

This progression toward smaller and smaller unit engagements has been happening throughout history. Weapon technology has driven this trend for the most part. Look what the machine gun did in WW I or tactical missile strikes in more modern times. As little as 20 years ago, it took a half a million men to push the Iraq army back across the boarder, even without the intent to occupy the country. Yet only a forth of this force was needed to smash, then occupy the very same country, just 10 years later.

Once the current leadership is dead or retired, the 30 year old, now junior officers will step up and realize that a drone is a fraction of the cost of an F-35, so a 10 to 1 ratio of drones (probably considerably more) will occupy the squadrons of the major players. Trust me on this folks, about the time we die, we'll see the last manned fighter used in a front line role and all the crying pilots on it's last flight, at attention along the flight line.

 

This is my thought as well.
To what degree is military preparedness founded on a thriving industrious economy?

What wins wars?
Is it the level of hardware present at the onset, or the depth of production capacity present in the country?

How about maintenance of personnel?
Didn't the WWII experience demonstrate the the Luftwaffe lost its capacity to produce pilots but was able to maintain hardware production virtually to the end?