For the Want of a Ship…

by

Priorities. Three data points.

First, remember this story from last month? Navy to Sideline 17 Vessels Due to Manpower Shortages.

So this an example of why the Navy is standing on the edge of a death spiral. We don’t have enough manpower to crew the ships we have, which means we need to take ships out of service, which means we put more pressure on the existing fleet with extended deployments, which means more problems with retention and recruitment. Rinse and repeat. When you see stories like the USS Eisenhower going on a nine month deployment through July of this year, this is the sort of thing that burns out crews and the fleet in general.

Second, I saw this story today, ”US Navy Replenishment Ship Sustains Damage While Operating in Middle East.” That replenishment ship was the only oiler in the USS Abraham Lincoln strike group which is currently operating near Oman in order to deter Iran. That oiler is now out of action and is being towed back to Dubai. There are no other oilers available in the fleet and the Navy is scrambling to find commercial vessels to service the Lincoln strike group.

A military force is only as good as its logistics and no oilers means the Lincoln strike group becomes a coastal force, tethered to ports for replenishment.

Of those 17 ships the Navy wants to take out of service? Two replenishment vessels and one oiler.

Third, Jill Biden reveals $500 Million Plan That Focuses on Women’s Health at Clinton Global Initiative Oh, really? Tell me more, like what problems are going to be addressed and where’s that money coming from?

First lady Jill Biden is unveiling a new set of actions to address health inequities faced by women in the United States, plans that include spending at least $500 million annually on women’s health research.

Biden was making the announcement Monday while closing out the first day of this year’s Clinton Global Initiative annual meeting in New York.

The additional government spending will mainly come from the Department of Defense…

So when we don’t have enough men and ships for the fleet, the Department of Defense is going to spend nearly $500 million annually on women’s health research? Not HHS or NIH?

Also, why announce this at the Clinton Global Initiative, that well-known personal slush fund for the Clinton crime family?

Did I mention the Clintons gave Joe an award?

Bet you that $500 million could have staffed those 17 ships they are taking off-line, maybe even built a new oiler.

Priorities.

15 thoughts on “For the Want of a Ship…”

  2. To the extent that Mike K. might be wrong, the combination of stupidity, incompetence and cupidity in the commands of all the services makes it a distinction without a difference. Any adversary planing a serious conflict could hardly dare hope for better, even made to order.

    How many sailor years do you imagine the debacle of the “Little Crappy Ships” would buy with the added benefit that none of them would have had to spend time in those pieces of excrement?

    They are now recapitulating that with their “new” frigates. They started well enough by buying an existing design that had been successfully deployed by a couple of NATO Navies. They, unfortunately, failed to note that those navies, long used to depending on the U.S. rarely, if ever, operated out of sight of their home port and shoreline. By the time all the “stakeholders” were done adding their piss to the pot, what is left is both much larger and massively more expensive that their “off the shelf” frigate. Not the same ship at all.

    If the navy can’t stand the loss of a single oiler while operating next door to the gas station, how would they propose to support any sort of extended operation in the Western Pacific, much less some sort of conflict, further from fuel sources?

    The Air Force is building a bomber that would have been perfect over Berlin in 1945 but will never fly within a thousand miles of a hostile border, stealth or no stealth. Lucky they have new engines on order for their B-52’s for when they need more than the handful they will end up with.

    Never fear, they are up to date on pronouns, and well stocked with rainbow flags. Now if they could just find enough soldiers, sailors and airmen willing to serve under officers and NCO’s that can’t make up their mind which sex they are.

  3. There is a truly dangerous part about the incompetence of everyone in the DC Swamp. (Just where are all those expensive Congresswomen and Senators when it comes to overseeing Defense Department spending?). The dangerous part is that the only piece of the US military that might still work effectively when the cards are down are those nuclear-armed missiles. It is easy to conjure up a scenario where the only real options facing the Swamp Creatures in any crisis are to go nuclear or go home … and it is unlikely that they will have the humility to choose to go home.

  4. “The dangerous part is that the only piece of the US military that might still work effectively when the cards are down are those nuclear-armed missiles.”

    I wonder if even this is too optimistic.

    Is it realistic to think that the only part of the military that we never ever see in action – nukes! – will be the only part that still works?

    Duck and cover, here we come.

  5. Too many people believe that the wrong side won the Cold War, and have been trying to correct that ever since.

    An honest version of Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize citation would read something like: “For his tireless efforts and signal achievements against the barbaric Empire that styles itself the United States of America, and the global threat to peace and civilization that it poses.”

  6. World War II arrived just in time to end the Great Depression and allow a working population to build a thousand ships in three years while millions of men joined the military. The US lacked only Diversity to see the collapse of that society.

  7. That oiler is now out of action and is being towed back to Dubai.

    Fun fact- The USN used to have ships specifically designed to repair damaged ships such as the USNS Big Horn but they were decommissioned in the 1990s. At least one was sunk as a target. Another fun fact- the Navy is now building a new class of oilers- and they’re all named after democrat politicians or leftist heroes.

    Anyway, the situation is vastly worse than nearly anyone would suspect. The navy is spending 2.6 billion dollars on a consulting contract, I don’t care why. This is simply money looted from the DoD and given to friends of the regime. Reportedly 40% of the USN sub fleet is out of service awaiting yard work. Speaking of shipyards, the navy decided to scrap the Bon Homme Richard because they couldn’t find a spot in the busy schedule of few remaining yards to do the work. And that ship burned thanks to almost unbelievable incompetence at very basic housekeeping- and the regime of course found a scapegoat to blame who was subsequently acquitted at court martial. I find all this disgusting so no links, but I’ll also note that the navy spent more time unsuccessfully attempting modernize a few Ticonderoga class cruisers than it did building the entire 27 ship class in the 1980s.

    You don’t fail this thoroughly by mere accident. This is deliberate sabotage.

  8. The navy is spending 2.6 billion dollars on a consulting contract, I don’t care why. This is simply money looted from the DoD and given to friends of the regime.

    Good point. I think the best way of thinking of that $500 million is that it will be chopped up and parceled to various Democratic NGOs.

    Why? I think it’s a little late in the season to be doing a version of Zuckerbucks. I’m going to go long here and point to the clue that Jill Biden is running this op. In addition to being the 21st Century version of Edith Wilson, I’m going to bet that she’s going to be spending not just the last 4 months of the administration, but her remaining years to enshrining Joe’s legacy (which is going to be hers as well)

    That money (and more that will be coming) is going to buy alot of chits that she will call in for things like getting stuff named after Joe, awards, and fund-raising for the Biden Library.

    After all… if the family;s wealth was built on foreign money why not complete the legacy with dollars diverted from the national defence?

    That’s the good part of the legacy-building efforts. The bigger fear is that the Bidens will try to do something policy-wise, especially internationally, to enshrine a legacy – like ramp up the war in Ukraine or do something stupid in the Middle East

  9. A partial solution to the repair, overhaul, and modernization problem has been suggested at the Real Clear Defense site, but it depends on motives not apparently present in our National Command Authority. Shipyard space is a limiting factor in many repairs. We do have allies who it so happens have a lot of shipyards and experience in building and repairing ships. This would only apply for smaller surface warships and auxiliaries, but much of the work could be done, and possibly more cheaply and yet to our standards, in allied shipyards. It was also suggested that since much of modernization involves weapons systems and electronics that such be made modular here, and the ships themselves rebuilt to receive said modules at those overseas shipyards once they return; keeping classified matters inside our borders.

    There ARE ways to ameliorate the problems. Unfortunately they require a government that wants to defend the country and which also is willing to forgo some of the kickbacks involved. So they are probably not going to happen.

    And even if such were to occur, we still have the critical problem of manning/womaning/otherwise-gendering these vessels returned to service under this government. I know that I would not encourage my descendants to enlist in the current military; if only because being of European or Asian descent can cripple a career.

    Subotai Bahadur

  10. The bigger fear is that the Bidens will try to do something policy-wise, especially internationally, to enshrine a legacy – like ramp up the war in Ukraine or do something stupid in the Middle East

    Too late. According to Bob Gates, every foreign policy decision Biden made in 50 years was wrong.

  13. Thanks for that link. I didn’t know Sal had a Youtube channel. I doubt I’ll have the stomach to watch it that often because the boundless incompetence of the USN has worn me out.

    If you can’t successfully build an oiler something has gone seriously wrong- something that can only be rectified by prison terms or firing squads.

  14. While we’re on the subject of government incompetence; where is the video of National Guard and the Army with their ginormous trucks fording streams and navigating submerged roads to bring FEMA bottled water and MRE’s to the victims of Helene? The only pictures of helicopters carrying relief I’ve seen were private ones. If you happened to look in the right place, you know that Florida had line crews from four states, probably more, that moved in as soon as the wind died down.

    We are informed that POTATUS was able to carry on with the 351st vacation of his administration without any unfortunate inconvenience from the weather and that Kamala was able to pull of another extortion of her “supporters” in San Francisco. Not that personal involvement of either in the relief efforts would produce anything but chaos, you’d think that they would at least make a token effort to feign concern.

    Hell, I haven’t seen a pallet or even a single bottle of FEMA water. I guess I missed when they delegated all that sort of thing to Waffle House.

    I think the NYT and Wash POO may have mentioned in passing that there, was a storm last week, then back to ongoing Israeli “genocide”.

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