Poor planning in the Persian Gulf
The Hill reports that the Navy will pull the USS Theodore Roosevelt from the Persian Gulf in October. The Roosevelt is providing about 20% of the air strikes against ISIS. It’s replacement, the USS Harry Truman won’t arrive in the Gulf until later in the winter. The Pentagon has it all figured out, though. They say that, because the fickle Turkish government has allowed the US use airbases there, finally, they can fill the gap left without a carrier that way.
A U.S. official said the reduced presence there isn’t out of lack of need, but due to fewer carriers available and the prioritization of the Asia Pacific.
“All I can say is that in the short-term, we need a continuous presence. The demand is out there, the [combatant commander] is asking for it, and the [Pacific Command] commander is asking for it. They’re asking for it. There’s just not enough peanut butter to spread around,” the official said.
“So what are you going to do? You’re going to give what you can. You’re going to prioritize based on what the president wants us to do, what the [defense] secretary wants us to do, and allocate those forces to meet those needs,” the official said.
Coincidentally, the Pentagon has also decided that they’ll pull out the Patriot air defense batteries from Turkey in October, too. Meaning that any aircraft that we have in Turkey will be less safe from missile attacks from Syria and ISIS.
It also emphasised that Washington remains “committed to supporting Turkey’s air defence capabilities, including against ballistic missile risks and threats… and its security and regional stability.”
A US defence official stressed that the move by the US military was for the purpose of force modernisation.
“It does not reflect a decision by the NATO Alliance to reduce support for Turkey’s air defence,” the official told AFP.
You know, it almost seems intentional, as if ISIS is moving our board pieces around for us.
Category: Terror War
Pop quiz time:
Why is the number of carriers reduced to barely adequate?
What is the point to withdrawing a defensive platform?
What is the purpose of making us look weaker and weaker?
Answer those questions correctly and you win the squirrel’s acorn cache for winter.
I’m sure the only thing B. Husein 0bama will say is “whatever” as he heads to the golf course.
To a certain extent, the US Military is a victim of their own success. Political leaders think that the military can pull a rabbit out of a hat no matter what. Good Job Guys!
The problem arises when the rabbit doesn’t come out. Then a lot of families get to go to funerals – or worse.
I guess this Administration doesn’t like the concepts of “unit rotation” and “RIP-TOA”. That’s the common-sense way to take care of the Patriot unit issue: upgrade another unit in CONUS or elsewhere, then rotate them to temporarily take up the Turkey mission while the unit currently there comes home for upgrade.
But I guess doing that would be endorsing a practice from the Bush Administration. So that’s probably why the current Administration opted not to do so.
Well, either that or they’re so incompetent they couldn’t spell “dog” after being spotted “d” and “g” (and even then would eff it up about 1 time in 4). Take your pick.
Who knew a nut like Trump would like Steven Hawking when contrasted against the current group of leaders in DC?
So we have corporate welfare for Bob Kraft and the Patriots, but we can’t find money for aircraft carriers to actually perform one of the missions outlined in the constitution…..I can’t seem to find the part in the constitution about giving billionaires tax credits on properties worth 500 million dollars, nor did I find anything about using tax payer money to cover the gaps offered the billionaires by reducing the general defense of the nation…must be looking at the wrong document.
Preach it, Brother!
Well that whole Constitution is really just a list of guidelines once you get into power. If you “feel” like following it, then cool. If not, well that document isn’t really for you, it is for the peasants in the country to follow.
All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others…
Of course ISIS is moving our pieces on the game board. Their leadership and general staff are currently occupying the White House.
That’s right.
Again, sat in the room when OSD(P) was told that this was going to happen. In fact, it was a Navy 3 star that explained to Hon. Wormuth how and why the proposed (and eventually accepted) POM and budget would cause havoc with future (now current) carrier deployment cycles. So, it isn’t a surprise that we are running out of Schlitz now, it was known and accepted as risk. Someone just forgot to tell the administration that the mitigation strategy was that we would have limited need in the Middle East after we left Iraq and Afghanistan.
I disagree. I think the ones who “told the administration” were replied to by having them sign their resignations.
The ones that are left are the ones telling the white house what they want to hear. The ones who told them what they needed to hear don’t have a job anymore. (Or are manning a weather station above the arctic circle.)
Reducing our military presence in areas that border Iran? Could such military capitulations be secret terms in the Iranian nuclear agreement the American people weren’t told about?
I don’t trust that lying son of a bitch in the White House not to give away the game and we already know that Kerry is a lying traitor.
Word!!!
Germany is also pulling their Patriots, saying Turkish and German goals do not align.
Yeah, read something about bombing the Kurds not being to NATO’s liking. I guess Erdogan thought he’d sneak in that bombing and no one would notice.
Maybe the US Patriot missiles are leaving Turkey for the same reason – maybe the administration thinks that the Turks should support the Kurds.
Given the history between them, hell will freeze over and the devil will go ice skating before the Turkey supports the Kurds.
The funny thing about it is that the white people are the only ones supporting the Kurds. All the tan people in the sandbox want the Kurds to become extinct.
“It also emphasized that Washington remains “committed to supporting Turkey’s air defense capabilities, including against ballistic missile risks and threats… and its security and regional stability.”
“Okay guys, here’s how it’s gonna go. We’re pulling out the tried and proven Patriot system but in its place we’re giving you these things called, trebuchets. They have a short learning curve so you can be up to action speed in an hour and it requires no external power source. All ammo is readily available anywhere you are. You get it right and it can bring down a low, slow flying aircraft easy peasy. So here ya go. Have fun!”
According to the Navy, US carriers are in the following locations:
CVN-68 Nimitz, in drydock for another 8 months
CVN-69 Dwight D. Eisenhower, in drydock, should have been out in April, not out yet.
CVN-70 Carl Vinson, in San Diego
CVN-71 Theodore Roosevelt, left homeport 11 MAR, in the Persian Gulf
CVN-72 Abraham Lincoln, refueling and complex overhaul, will end Nov 2016
CVN-73 George Washington, Norfolk, hull swap with Reagan – what the heck is a “hull swap”?
CVN-74 John C. Stennis, composite unit training off SOCAL
CVN-75 Harry S. Truman, 5 Aug depart Norfolk, enroute WestLant
CVN-76 Ronald Reagan, hull swap with George Washington
CVN-77 George H.W. Bush, 16 Jun, entered the Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth, Va. for a nine-month Planned Incremental Availability (PIA) – what the heck is a “planned incremental availability”?
So the TR, Truman, and the Stennis are offshore. The Reagan and the Washington are doing something that sounds a little kinky. And lots of other carriers are in various body and fender shops.
I am an Army guy so I have a few questions for all of you Navy types.
1. are carriers basically unreliable or high-maintenance? Why so much maintenance? This has to cost almost as much as one F35.
2. Do we need more to be sure that we have one if we need one?
3. how come they all broke at the same time? See question 1.
4. please tell me that this isn’t political – “we don’t plan on using them for anything so let’s bring them all home and save the money.”
5. Are they actually working on them or are they just sitting there? Actually working means that, at least, some people are earning a wage but now we have a lot of navy people who are NOT deployed — deployment is sort of their reason for existing …
REAGAN and GW doing a hull swap because REAGAN will forward deploy to Japan and GW is going to Norfolk for refueling. All the other carriers in maintenance is not necessarily so unusual. Navy ships are capital intensive and require a lot of maintenance. Also, these carriers are getting a little long in the tooth (NIMITZ was commissioned in the mid 70’s). A good analogy would be taking your car out for an 8 month drive and running it 90 miles an hour about 75 percent of the 8 month deployment. You can only repair the car with parts and tools you can carry in your trunk. You do this to your car starting in 1977. It is 2015. Your car is probably pretty tired and needs some work.
When I worked for an airline and one A/C was substituted to fly a leg that another A/C had been scheduled to fly, we referred to it as a “tail swap”.
In this case, it looks like the Reagan is going to complete the mission assigned to the Washington so that the Washington can go in for refuel/refit. Meantime they are both on station and transitioning (I think).
http://www.navy.mil/submit/display.asp?story_id=90548
and about hull swap in general:
http://www.doncio.navy.mil/chips/ArticleDetails.aspx?ID=4354
It might be nice to have them both on station in the Pacific since NDtBF rattled his toy sabre yesterday.
Oh, and every two years you can take your car to the shop and have it fixed by a mechanic, unless congress decides you don’t have any money to fix your car and tells you to defer all your maintenance. Then the government decides their is trouble out on the roadway and you need to get back out there and start driving 90 miles and hour for another 8 months even though you didn’t get to do your maintenance. You’d also, occasionally, like to upgrade or modernize your car so you need to send your car to the shop for that. Of course, the national command authority and the geographic combatant commanders really like your car to be on the road, as well as the smaller cars of some of your friends. They don’t like it when the cars are in the shop, but the simple fact of the matter is cars are machines, built by man, so they break and then break some more. But screw that maintenance, we need to get the damn car back on the road. The navy has always said they needed at least 12 cars as a minimum. They have 11 cars right now, some are older than others and contain a lot of original equipment from the 70’s that has been traveling 90 miles and hour for a very long time. That’s why all the cars need maintenance and since it has been put off for so long all the chickens are coming home to roost.
Okay, W2, but should we need them (you never know), are all the older carriers in mothballs or sunk and turned into reefs? I know that a lot of them are.
I find it disturbing that, per your vehicle analogy, there is no apparent scheduled maintenance the way there is for my aging 2001 Escape. It seems to be random and haphazard to me, but then, I had only one day on the Lexington when I was down at NAS Pensacola.
The problem with mothballed anything is the work it takes to bring it back to life. The last two conventional carriers (JFK and KITTY HAWK) would take a massive effort to get back to the fleet. KHK was in bad shape with a lot of tank and void structural work that would need to be done and that’s not even trying to get the engineering plant back on line. Steam plants are great while the are steaming; once you lay them up every seal on every pump as well as boiler and steam piping would become suspect. I heard JFK was in even worse shape and Big E had to just go away because the equipment in the plant was becoming unsupportable due to age and obsolescence. Those conventionally powered carriers won’t ever be coming back IMHO.
The problem with carrier maintenance is getting the navy to schedule it, and then stick to it. I worked in navy maintenance and was on 5 ships during my USN career. Since I retired, I have worked the last 4 years in a shipyard performing modernization and maintenance on surface ships. I have friends who work on the carrier side and it’s basically the same old crap over there of deferring maintenance due to funding or operational commitments. I understand ships belong at sea, but when you don’t maintain them per your own schedule because of operational or budgetary requirements and then you compound the problem by telling sailors they are operators, not maintainers, you get into the predicament you find yourself in with the carriers and surface fleet today. Nobody fixing anything, but still driving the piss out of it. I could go on all day but every time I get up on the governor about this it makes me want to cry because it’s so sad. God, I need a drink now.
I offer another shining example of maintenance insanity then I just have to stop because it’s depressing – when LCS “deploys” to Singapore it brings with it a rather long tail of Lockheed Martin contractors (getting full per diem at the Singapore rate) because that’s who does maintenance on LCS, Lockheed Martin. Insane.
Well, I know that if I don’t take care of my car, I will have more than just mere maintenance to face, but then, I’m not the dumb dipstick in the Big Chair who thinks we don’t need the military for anything.
If you take care of something, it will last a long time. If you don’t, it will fall apart just when you need it the most.
When are we going to get some f—–g sense back into the picture? (That’s a rhetorical question.)
We have been running the piss out of every class of ship since the FRAM II / CHARLES F ADAMS class. Maintenance comes and goes in cycles. Unfortunately, we are in a very downward spiraling cycle right now. President Reagan saved the US Navy in mores ways than I can count because he freed up the cash we needed to buy back readiness brought on by the neglect of the Post Vietnam and then Carter years. I can’t see another President Reagan on the horizon to put common sense back into the equation. As the old saying goes, “you can pay me now or you can pay me later”. Paying later means reduced combat readiness and the potential loss of ships and sailors.
In addition to all the above, when the ship finally comes back out of the yard it takes 2-6 months to get all the systems to operate properly again due to yard workers taking shortcuts like cutting cables all hither and yon because they don’t want take the time to run the new cables properly. Oh, and also they contract out the non skid work to a bunch of unskilled day workers who don’t prep the bare steel properly so the non skid comes up 6 months after it was put down. They can’t even snap a straight chalk line and paint the flight deck properly so it all has to be re-done.
I am surprised Obummer and his boys are not trying to send the “Good Ship Lollipop” to pull duty.
It ran aground in Ferguson…
Same situation I endured in Alaska right after Vietnam. We dealt with equipment left over from Korea as the Army had been too busy buying jungle fatigues, boots and artillery shells to even begin to worry about such a thing as Arctic Warfare.
It wasn’t until Reagan came in that they finally got realistic about the equipment.
But, that was the story across the entire military force.
Had it not been for Reagan, we would have lost Desert Storm 1 because of a lack of decent equipment.
We have never been closer to a nuclear conflagration than we were under Carter as the standing army was pretty much destroyed so f the Russians had decided to come across the Fulda Gap, we had no other choice to but to go nuclear…
Stupid libs kill more people than cancer with their moronic policies…
Okay, I get it now. I think it can be summarized as follows:
A – When I see a 1957 pony car or a 1970 yellow Chevelle restored to all their former shiny glory tooling down the highway, I know that someone gives a damn about then and takes care of them.
B – The people who buy Priuses now are the same people who let those classic cars go to shit and rust in a junk yard because they don’t know how to take care of them.
Is that close?
That and the Prius owners have to have a reason to sneer while they say “OH, look at me!” while they pick their noses as they drive at least 5 MPH below the speed limit in the passing lane!
Yes, and their itty-bitty batteries literally die in cold weather. I can only imagine what Tesla owners go through.
http://www.cleveland.com/business/index.ssf/2014/01/auto_batteries_and_cold_weathe.html
My Escape – Ford tough! Everything I see about this whole wickerbill alternate vehicle stuff gives me the giggles. I was in favor of it at first, but then, the reality set in, and I fell down laughing. Fortunately, there was a snowbank handy to fall into.
Another thing about their pwecious widdwe vehicles is the toxicity of those batteries they contain as well as the costs associated with replacement and the HAZMAT fees, I can’t wait to hear them while and bawl about that!