Thanks to all, particularly corsair. I have read Cmdr. Salamander, and have also seen episodes of What the Ship.

I've read a lot about the failure, but haven't been much into the causes.

I served in the Army and remember Crusader, which was going to be the New Great Thing until it wasn't. I've followed, as many of us have, the Army's quest for a new rifle. We have all seen the abbreviated development of the F22, the difficult birthing of the F35 (does everything, kicks ass, is stealthy!), the mistake that is the Osprey, etc.

As bad as these failures are, they are peripheral to the service's central mission, and other assets exist to allow the continuation of the mission.

The failure at the Navy leaves us at risk of not having functioning ships to carry out a mission. The Burkes are ageing out faster than they can be repaired (its own scandal), the carriers are worthless without guardships, we are desperately short of show the flag, maritime patrol, and strategic presence assets. We can deploy a carrier task group, but can't send a destroyer squadron to a banana republic to tell them to simmer down.

Ships and manning are critical to the entire mission of the Navy, and they have consistently failed to deliver on the nation's priorities.

I pray for their success. I grew up on the water, dad and uncle were Coast Guard. I should have joined the Navy and not the Army, and have a great deal of respect for the Navy's history and traditions. I sincerely hope they get it right.

In short, there's a severe lack of leadership within the Navy, the Department of the Navy and Congress. At each level, maintaining the status quo and 'making it to the next promotion' period has taken priority over fixing problems and refining current processes.

Two Navy figures standout that by force of their personality, persistence in position and sheer-will, made the current Navy into its current success: Admiral Hyman Rickover dominated the submarine program for 40-years, shaping it into a safe, demanding and rigorous branch where submarines are a major war-fighting arm. RADM Wayne Meyer, 'Father of Aegis' shaped and developed the weapon system for 10+ years which is now the predominant integrated weapon system for not just the US Navy but several allied fleets as well; the engagements in Red Sea 2024 validated all the testing and investment. The current Navy has no Rickover or Meyer who can lead nor has any vision to establish sound practices or willingness to fix the issues, secondarily there's no one in Congress who has any interest not just with the Navy but the overall maritime segment entirely. Sen Mark Kelly a Navy vet and co-author of the Ships for America Act was a possible advocate however he appears to be more concerned with giving service members vague warnings and faux concern about illegal orders than focusing on fixing more tangible and pressing issues.

I mean, the REAL problem is that, unlike the Army/Marines, the Air Force and the subsea environment, the US Navy has been more or less without equal for 80+ years, and certainly not for 35+ years since the fall of the USSR. With no real competition for the blue sea environment, the competition is against the other US services for money and power.

quote:

Originally posted by Loswsmith:
I mean, the REAL problem is that, unlike the Army/Marines, the Air Force and the subsea environment, the US Navy has been more or less without equal for 80+ years, and certainly not for 35+ years since the fall of the USSR. With no real competition for the blue sea environment, the competition is against the other US services for money and power.

Was about to post something along the lines of - Our Navy has problems, but who else is even close?
We still need to work on the issues for sure, but I'm not certain we still don't make people panic when one of our carrier groups gets cozy with them.

Here's more content you can listen to that provides some deeper insight and some of thinking in axing the FFG(X) program. Both guests are pretty high-up and interestingly identified the problems, what's frustrating is the people currently in place don't appear to be working to make the necessary fixes. For some context on this program, the host Chris Cavas is arguably the longest tenured journalist writing about the Navy.

The FREMM was already going to be a heavy frigate at 6000-tons, then the Navy tried to add an additional 1000-tons of equipment requiring endless redesigns, cocking-up the entire process. The Navy wants a new destroyer (Burke-class is a 30yr old design & DDG-1000 was a failed program) and attempted to shoehorn it all into a frigate hull.