So the White House doesn't want to save money by getting rid of one of our carriers?
The White House is pushing back against a Pentagon plan to cut a carrier as part of its Fiscal Year 2015 budget, several sources confirmed to USNI News. ...
Under a potential OSD carrier cut — first reported by Defense News — the Pentagon would decommission a Nimitz-class nuclear carrier well ahead of its 50-year service life during the window of the ship’s scheduled mid-life refueling.
With the decommissioning of the ship — likely USS George Washington (CVN-73) — the Navy could also shed a carrier air wing — though it is still unclear how the air arms would be reduced if a carrier were to leave the fleet.
If we keep 11 carriers, how few ships do we expect our Navy to get by with to save an equivalent amount of money? If the Pentagon is willing to give up a carrier, I'm just happy that the Pentagon is picking a number for the fleet and trying to get there under budget limits.
I think it would be a shame to decommission Washington when she has a lot of life in her.
But we could still save money by saving the ship.
Look, the ship needs to go into major mid-life refueling. So it will be out of action for a while. Why not modify Washington during this mid-life refueling (which is also used to modernize a carrier) to function as an amphibious warfare ship?
I suggested doing this with Ford class carriers to put more of those hulls in the water at the expense of America class amphibious warfare ships, which are optmized for aviation operations:
There is some controversy on this, but the new amphibious ships are optimized for aviation operations and lack a well deck to use small amphibious craft as past ships had to move Marines ashore.
Why not build amphibious warfare vessels even larger than America class ships that would be real reserve strike-capable aircraft carriers if needed.
What if we made our amphibious warfare ships based on the Ford hull? Which is the pinnacle of aviation optimized ships.
We did use a big-deck carrier for special forces missions in the initial Afghanistan campaign, in 2001.
And we used a big-deck carrier to carry Army forces in a Haiti mission before that, in 1994.
But build the amphibious warfare Fords without much of the gear needed for the first line fleet carriers but with the ability to add this equipment if we need more strike carriers.
I assume we'd need fewer Ford amphibious warfare vessels than America class because of the greater size of the former.
And as big-deck carriers, we'd save money on needing vertical take-off versions of our fighter and strike aircraft. The Marines could simply use the Navy version of the F-35, for example.
Knowing we have an operational reserve carrier fleet dedicated to moving Marines, we could build fewer of the fleet carriers and put that money into surface combatants and subs to achieve sufficient numbers for our fleet.
Heck, the Fords could supplement amphibious lift if we needed that, since we've shown big carriers can function that way.
I should correct one thing. The Navy version is actually more expensive than the Marine version. If there are to be savings it would be by reducing the types of planes and reducing Navy version costs with more units produced for the Marines.
This is a big step. So why not try it out with Washington? If this aviation optimized big deck carrier can replace America class vessels, we could get an idea of whether this is feasible as an operational matter and whether it is affordable. And we could find out if one big deck amphibious warfare ship could replace more than one America class ship,
If it works, we could truncate the America class and build more Ford hulls to function as amphibious warfare vessels. Perhaps keep the America class ships with well decks rather than the pure aviation ships if the big decks to the aviation role better.
I'm a land guy. But I like to think that I minored in naval. I'd love to see naval and Marine professionals weigh in on this.
And while I'm in the experiment mood, if we cut our carrier force from 11 to 10, couldn't we refrain from cutting our carrier air wings from 10 to 9 and see how we might use that "extra" (because one carrier is always out of the picture for long-term overhaul) air wing on land in place of forward deployed carriers?
I want a Navy second to none. I'm desperate to afford that Navy. How desperate is the Pentagon to do just that when more money isn't coming?
