All posts tagged "navy"

Donald Trump's administration has been warned its future plans for the navy are handing China victory in the sea.

Paul Giarra, a former U.S. Navy aviator and Navy-designated strategic planner, has urged the president and his staff to reconsider the decommissioning of the USS Nimitz, the oldest aircraft carrier in the world. A report from The Hill confirmed the ship had been ordered to return to the Naval Base Kitsap in Bremerton, Washington. Giarra believes this is a huge mistake.

"Retiring Nimitz is driven by long-range plans formulated years ago, immune to change, and designed to make room in the budget for new ships," he said. "To even the most casual observer, the decision to decommission Nimitz was made with no regard for readiness, China or warfighting capacity."

"The decision to take Nimitz out of service in the face of a massive Chinese navy buildup is a reflection of the unsustainable U.S. Navy planning process that is distributed over numerous organizations and over such long periods of time that it is impossible to have a single directing purpose driving the procurement process with any sense of strategic coherence."

Giarra would go on to say the decision to decommission the USS Nimitz would have longer-term consequences for the US' naval dominance.

He said, "That the U.S. Navy’s right hand does not know what the left hand is doing is excruciatingly evident. The decision to decommission Nimitz makes absolutely no sense when every U.S. Navy and allied flight deck and missile tube and torpedo are needed to balance the explosive and threatening growth of China’s navy."

Late last year the president announced a new class of Navy ships which would bear his name. A Pentagon official familiar with the proposal confirmed the "Trump class" battleships were set to feature as a core of the "Golden Fleet".

Retired Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery called the new $5 billion ships "exactly what we don't need."

"We do not need ships that are not optimized to provide lethality against the Chinese threat," Montgomery told the Journal, noting that the ship had "zero tactical use."

"That is not what these are focused on—they are focused on the president's visual that a battleship is a cool-looking ship," Montgomery said.

A proposed battleship line named after Donald Trump has already hit a snag according to a professor of war.

Professor Alessio Patalano of King's College London says the production of battleships named after Trump faces several problems, and that is before production has even started. The professor of war and strategy says the US may have the infrastructure necessary to building the new fleet, but it lacks the space and money necessary.

Speaking to CNN, professor Patalano said, "The question is … whether the US has a sufficient shipyard capacity and workforce to translate a visual gold fleet into a real sailing one."

"The US Navy is not known for being at the forefront of automation and innovative solutions in terms of more compact crew management." The professor of war and strategy has also suggested bringing these battleships up to speed with the rest of the US navy will require more than money.

It will also need a "cultural shift - in light of other new classes being built - of no trifling proportions," Patalano added. Fellow expert and former US Navy captain, Carl Schuster, agrees that a cultural shift is necessary for the project to be a success.

He said, "A national scale recruitment and training program for shipyard, electrical, information and sensor system workers (would be) required to support this program."

"This project will be managed by NAVSEA (Naval Sea Systems Command), an organization and staff that has screwed up every surface warship program of this century. I believe Trump must clean house in that organization if he wants any shipbuilding program to succeed."

Schuster would go on to suggest there is a comparison to be made between Trump's military plans and that of JFK's space program.

The ex-Navy captain said, "I think Trump is trying to achieve a maritime equivalent to JFK’s call for a space program. Remember, the Soviets seemed to be ahead of us in space, a direct threat to our national security."

"The PLAN is nearing the ability to challenge our access to the Western Pacific, a direct and clear threat to our national security. Since it also poses a threat to Japan and South Korea, enlisting their help to meet that challenge is a necessary solution to the problem."