re: #472 thedopefishlives

Or, for example, the Nimitz class (why are we “upgrading” to the Ford-class again?), which has been in existence since the discovery of practical nuclear sea power. Granted, we never had a chance to find out how they would fare in an all-out naval battle, but as the queens on the chessboard of international politics, they have been without equal.

There are several long term problems with ship procurements.

For one thing, they are very long-life, huge expense items. There is no way around that.

The carrier problem had as one of its instigators the nuclear power problem. Namely, can a ship be run with less power consumption. The nuclear power program of the USN is a large budget item. Reducing size and cost is important. And also to that end is a small ship’s complement. Trimming down the size of the onboard population can make the ship lighter and give more room for “stuff” instead of people.

The Zumwalt compromise was done to satisfy the needs of 21st century reality of guided missiles. The bottom line is it is impossible to truly hide a surface ship in the era of satellites, but the best one can do is try to keep onself form being an easy target from SSM and ASM.

The littoral Navy always had the difficult challenge of landing soldiers without getting sunk. Outside of nuclear warfare it is probably the most difficult type of mission. I’ve always thought that mine warfare is the achilles heel of the modern Navy. We have not fought a naval war since WWII that really would challenge us in this regard. Instead we do force projection (hence the need for aircraft carriers and subs that can launch cruise missiles.) If there is ever a future war where we call on our Navy to fight in the shallow water I fear the losses will be almost certainly large and perhaps total.

The bottom line is that in the 21st century the idea of a naval war perhaps is outdated. But we still need a navy, because ownership of the seas is still strategically so important that we pretend we want a huge Navy.

Regardless of any design or project decisions, this is a major national investment, like all our military budget, which is huge, and shapes our society deeply.